To kick things off for spring, I’m shamelessly using my blog to enter a contest with Epiphanie Bags. Despite my extreme bitterness that they discontinued the bag I waited 2 years to purchase, right as I finally tried to order it (the Turquoise Belle), I still love their products and they’re having people post green photos to enter.  Since I cannot wait for green to come back to the landscape, I thought it was a good time to post this:

Bells of St. Luke

I entered the Epiphanie Camera Bags Picture It photo contest. http://bit.ly/xN3Pqc

That’s it for now, but with warm temperatures finally here and Art in the Park hopefully on the horizon, I should be coming back and posting again soon!

I put pictures taken of my dad’s side of the family, and around his house, into his version.

My grandmother is my mom’s mom, so I include pictures from around my mom’s place, pictures of the kids, pictures of my mom, etc.

My mom’s calendar is similar, but with more pictures of my husband Jared and his dad (who is married to my mom – yes I know that sounds odd, but they’ve been married for just over a year and Jared and I have been together for almost 10 so no, I didn’t marry my step-brother). Both my grandmother and my mother hate pictures of themselves, but want pictures of each other, so there’s some swapping involved there too.

Even using a relatively easy-to-use software to make and order the calendars (I use iPhoto and have been consistently impressed with the quality of calendars and speed with which they arrive, but couldn’t recommend their regular printing service for photos), it’s a lot of work. This year, not counting the time spent over a number of evenings winnowing my favourite family photos from the year’s worth of shooting, I did one marathon session where I sat my butt down at 7:30 and did not stir until I was done after 2 am. And this is my third or fourth year of making these, so I’m much quicker than I was that first year.

It has occurred to me though, that the creation of these calendars is part of what Christmas is all about to me: family and the can’t-be-denied-but-is-so-worth-it effort it often entails. The devotion of attention required to pick out just the right pictures, the consideration of who is going to be the recipient of this particular combination, the effort to include the milestones that would be important to that person, and the effort to ensure a good balance between subjects (I try to make sure both kids are represented equally, though I put more of each one in the pictures for their birthday month), the extra few minutes it takes to ensure that the colour and contrast is right… it’s all worth the dry scratchy eyes, sore wrists and numb derriere. Physical discomfort aside, I love seeing all the best shots of the year, marvelling at how much the kids have grown since last January, and maximizing the look of each shot so it can tell its own story. And I love knowing that each month my mom, dad, and grandmother will be turning the page to marvel at fresh set of pictures of their kids/grandkids/greatgrandkids.

I bet most people have some sort of labour-of-love ritual around the holidays. Is yours photography? Baking? Feel free to share in the comments.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Sarah won the “most votes” hands down, and despite the minefield of her votes throughout the comments section, the random number generator managed to hit upon a second winner on the first try.

So our second winner, with comment #35, was Dawn!  Ladies, I’ll be emailing to find out which images you’d like to have printed!

Thanks so much to everyone that tried to help the kids get their play structure.  All votes and good wishes were truly appreciated!

Here are examples of photos you can choose:

Here is the deal: I will give away two items, each one the winner’s choice of 12×12 image.

The prize includes worldwide shipping via Canada Post regular mail.

How do I win one of these wonderful pictures, you ask?

Simple, vote for the project here: http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11485

Then come back here and leave a comment each time you vote (make sure it’s one comment per vote if you want to be counted more than once).  Make sure you enter a valid email address so I can contact you if you win.  I promise I will not collect your address on any list and spam you.

You can vote every day until noon, December 16th, so I’ll give one prize to the person who votes the most.  In case of a tie, I’ll randomly pick between the people who are tied for the most votes. You can use several email accounts to register, which means that yes, it’s possible to vote more than 12 times, and each time you do, come back and leave a comment. It all counts baby!

I’ll also give one random prize to anyone who votes at all.

I had trouble getting in to the voting system today, but I managed eventually so persistence pays off!  Hopefully they’ll iron out the kinks soon…

Spread the word wide and far!

So what happens now?  First the fun stuff – I get to announce who will receive the prizes.

Winners for this contest are:

Sarah, who ran away with the prize for the most votes!

And the random number generator at random.org has picked … well, first it picked Sarah again (she did have the best odds after all), but I need two winners and the second time it ran it picked comment #17, and that’s Pamela!

Ladies, watch your email for official notice and a request to let me know your choice of image/calendar! In the meantime, you can take a look and make your picks.  Will you choose:

• an 8×10  or 8×8 image or
• a 2012 5×7 botanical desk calendar?

The rest of you, do not despair – one more round of voting is coming in the first half of December and I’m going to run another contest.  I may even up the stakes.  There will only be 90 projects in that round, and we only have to get into the top third, but competition will be fierce between groups that have already proven that, like us, they can muster up some serious voting support. 

I’m planning on sending a direct email to let everyone who left a comment know when the next contest opens.  Don’t worry, I won’t send any email after that without express permission – I’m no spammer!  If you don’t want to vote in that round then just ignore me, but otherwise vote and spread the word.  I look forward to giving away more free stuff just in time for Christmas!

Thanks again to all of you who placed votes and got us this far…

My daughter’s school has no play structure in the kindergarten yard.  It was deemed unsafe and removed.  My son is starting junior kindergarten next fall.

The parents at the school have been wracking their brains for fundraising ideas… but all the time and hard work necessary to raise enough money can be circumvented if the school wins money through the Aviva Community Fund. 

Here is the deal: I will give away two items, each one the winner’s choice between:

• an 8×10  or 8×8 image
• a 2012 5×7 botanical desk calendar

The prize includes worldwide shipping via Canada Post regular mail.

How do I win these wonderful things, you ask?

Simple, vote for the project here: http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11485

Then come back here and leave a comment each time you vote (make sure it’s one comment per vote if you want to be counted more than once).  I’ll open up comments for the next week so that they should show up right away (apologies in advance if the spambots flock in faster than I can delete them).  If you try to comment and can’t, hit the “contact me” link just under my banner to get my email address and drop me a line.

You can vote every day until noon, October 19^th, so I’ll give one prize to the person who votes the most.  In case of a tie, I’ll randomly pick between the people who are tied for the most votes.

I’ll also give one random prize to anyone who votes at all.

Spread the word!  This is a big deal to me so I’d appreciate any and all votes that you can muster up!

Despite that I had an absolutely fantastic weekend - met great people, got some lovely feedback, and sold a whole bunch of prints - I did find that I ended up giving the whole concept of Limited Edition Prints some thought… then felt compelled to potentially shoot myself in the foot by sharing these thoughts with the event organizers.  Hope they let me back and give me my amazing-location spot again!  At any rate, I thought maybe I would post those same thoughts here and see if anyone else wants to chime in with either agreement or dissenting food-for-thought.  Here is what I wrote:

• I feel it should be the artist’s choice to determine how best to market their work.  If limiting the number of prints results in a higher value and the artist has to sell fewer of them to make the same money, that’s a valid marketing tactic.  But if an artist wants to accept less money but gets pleasure out of knowing that more households get enjoyment out of viewing his or her work, that should be just as valid.
• The idea that value is tied to the number of prints is flawed: Ansel Adams did not limit his editions, and printed more than 800 copies of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”, yet his prints are still among the most valuable out there.
• The number of copies does not, in my opinion, make photography “art”.  The idea of a limited edition comes from other areas of art. Historically, prints from lithographs, wood carvings and the like were mechanically limited due to the gradual destruction of the original caused by the printing process. Results eventually degraded to the point that the original was destroyed.  Today, “prints” in the world of painting are copies of the original.  However, the nature of photography is different: the true “original” is a negative or, much more often, a digital file, the latter of which a photographer would have to sell the copyright to in order to truly remove it from his or her inventory – and very few photographers would ever do this without compensation far beyond an art show transaction.  Therefore prints become the only version that would be sold at an art fair and they are not “cheap copies” of originals that they replace, they are instead “affordable art” for the masses. 
• As I’ve seen opined, “Only a photograph that is printed and held by the photographer during his or her lifetime is considered an original. … All original photographs can be considered limited editions, since they [can only be] produced… during an artist’s lifetime. Some are numbered on the photograph.”  This strikes me as both logical and true.
• I understand that many if not most fine-art photographers have just a few pieces that are the most popular and from which they derive a good chunk of their sales – making an artist miss out on income because of an rule that limits production to an arbitrary number does not make sense to me and can even result in holding someone back from being able to devote themselves to their art full-time.  I admit that this particular conjecture, by the way, is theoretical, as I have yet to get to the point where I can contemplate leaving my full-time job to devote myself exclusively to my art.

In summation, I don’t believe the rules have kept pace with technology, and the nature of photography itself.  I feel the choice of whether to do a limited edition or an open edition should rest with the photographer.

So, yeah, I cannot really explain why I cannot just shut my trap about this sort of thing, but if you are from the New Art Festival, please do not think me ungrateful!  I LOVED being part of the show!  I just happen to philosophically disagree with one of your rules… at least I still followed it so that counts for something, right?

Oh and if you found this blog by reading my business card that you got at the show, welcome!  I hope you enjoyed seeing my work and took a moment to chat with me – the interaction is one of the best parts of being in a show.

Here’s one:

And another:

Now if only more than one person would accept my Facebook invitation!

This will be the third time I’ve been in the former: it means that I’ll have up to three images in the Tulip Art Gallery, which is a temporary gallery that is run by the Canadian Tulip Festival.  This year will be the first time it’s been at Major’s Hill Park though, so I’m curious to see if that makes a difference in terms of sales.

An aside: This year, Watercan’s Embassy Ball isn’t being held in conjunction with the Tulip Festival, but I went ahead and promised them a print for their silent auction anyway.  Clean water is a cause I can get behind.

The New Art Festival is the festival formerly known as Art in the Park.  It is THE outdoor art festival in Ottawa and getting in is very competitive.  Go me!  The big thing about this festival is that it is art only and no crafts.  So every print I bring has to be signed and numbered as part of a limited-edition series.  No cards, no magnets, no jewellery, just prints.  And since I sell a number of smaller prints on Etsy and as part of my calendars, anything I’ll bring to this will be larger and at least matted.  My plan is to have all my framed prints on display, with a small flip-through rack of matted and bagged prints as well. 

Wish me luck!