GarthWunsch.com

Posts Tagged ‘Fine Art’

Wow, the start of another decade! Or is it just another year, just another number? For me it is the beginning of the rest of my life, a life I hope to make count and to be fully accountable for. I’ve been drawing a pension cheque since 1998, but that doesn’t mean I  have retired, nor do I intend to retire. That is a concept foreign to history.

As near as I can figure, 2010 marks FIFTY years since I picked up my first camera as a fifteen year old Boy Scout on a quest for more proficiency badges. Who Knew? Photography has been my constant companion for this half century, and I see no reason why it cannot be my companion for many more decades to come. My dad turns 92 in May and mom just celebrated her 85th birthday and last fall was anniversary number 67 for them… so, as I like to tell folks, ” I have really good genes, so long as a bus doesn’t run over them.” There is always something new to learn, something beautiful to see, something new to create that will bring joy to my world.

As we move into 2010, I am also posting my second “Print of the Month” titled Water Garden. It is an image I made on a canoe outing in Killarney Provincial Park with my friend David Kechnie in 2008. David is an avid and accomplished gardener. His comment about the landscape we were in summed it all up… “you just couldn’t design a water garden that lovely.” Simplicity personified! I love this country I am privileged to call home. So much water, so much rock, so much character and beauty. You can link to my Print of the Month here, and to my Fine Art Gallery here. I have made the Friends of Killarney Park a recipient of a portion of each sale of this image.

For me, this image is so pure, so clean. I wanted to title it Coquilles, the French word for “shells”, but I thought it a bit too obscure. It so reminded me of coquilles St. Jacques, not the food dish, but the shell markers placed on the ground and elsewhere for the the pilgrims making their way along the Camino de Santiago. It is a holy pilgrimage, a time of purification, and that is how this image strikes me, the blue so pure, so clean, the rocks so sculpted and so refined, seemingly floating on the water… Whole… and Holy.

Happy New Year everyone!

Each year the Sudbury Food Bank sponsors an art competition to source images for their annual Christmas Card Collection. They choose ten images which are presented and sold at their Gala Dessert Fund Raiser. Each winning artist donates a framed copy of their submission which is auctioned off during the evening to assist with the work of the food bank. This event is a pretty big deal, so I am really honoured to have one of my images chosen. The artists each receive two very highly coveted and rather pricey tickets to the evening (sells out every year), being hosted this year by Sudbury Fine Cars, our local Mercedes-Benz dealer. My sincere thanks to the selection committee.

David Johannsson (owner of the FrameMaker) and I hung the show this AM. Looks Good. Anxious for tomorrow to get under way.

64 years old… back to school! Just returning from five days at Niagara School of Imaging (NSI) http://www.niagaraschool.com/ . What a blast! Traveling through the fruit belt of Ontario brought back so many memories from my youth when I spent part of a summer picking fruit in the Vineland and Jordan Station area about fifty years ago. NSI was awesome. I enrolled in Marilyn Sholin’s class http://www.marilynsholin.com/

for digital painting. Marilyn is one of only three dozen Corel Paining Masters in the world and she deserves to be there. All NSI classes are small (7 in our case) so you get all the attention you need. Now I have to unscramble my brain and start using what I learned. The hardest part is getting my head around the idea that paintings are a representation of reality (unless you’re my magnificent artist friend Cheryl Battistelli  http://cherylbattistelli.com/ who seems to know every whisker on a cat’s face… I’m sure she counts them Anyway, made some really nice friends and am looking forward to this new expression of my artistic talents.

The iPhone is gluing itself to me… already.

For some time I have been searching the web for a database for sunrise, sunset times (that part was easy), but what I REALLY needed was to know WHERE the sun would be rising or setting on any given day of the year, and know the information for any location on earth, and from any location, even though I was sitting in my office planning my next shoot to hopefully add to my Fine Art Gallery. I couldn’t find what I needed… until the iPhone came into my life, and there it was, Vincent Kekoa’s Sunrise Sunset Pro… and all for $1.99. So now I can lay out the map, enter the GPS coordinates into the app, and know that if I am standing at point X on Georgian Bay looking out at the Killarney Lighthouse, I can know where the sun will be rising relative to the subject on any given day of the year. Thanks Vincent.

This app rocks, pretty, useful… and easy to use. I give it 5 stars.

Find it at http://www.appstorehq.com/sunrisesunsetpro-iphone-41877/app

Find iPhone apps at AppStoreHQ

until the next time, Garth

Well folks, this blog and all the related stuff is finally starting to take shape, at least in my head, because I am now starting to understand this cyber gobble-de-gook a little better (some days a little less than others). It’s hard when your hair turns white! I really owe my web designer a big vote of thanks for taking my hand when the quicksand was just about to engulf me. If you are into getting a photo oriented blog on the go with Wordpress, then go visit James at http://big-red-couch-web-design.com/ Tell him Garth sent you.

For those of you looking for my new samples and all that good stuff, please be patient. I have just signed up with a really great web and print company (Pictage). It took me a long time to find a company that does all they do, and do it so well. It is the brain child of Gary Fong, photographer and inventor of a whole bunch of stuff. They will be hosting my online galleries where you will be able to view and/or purchase images you are interested in, whether they be weddings, portraits, special events etc. You will select the images you want, add them to your cart, and then Pictage will print them and ship them off to you directly. They will come from the United States, but there is no import duty on photographs. Because they are listed in US dollars, I will be setting my web prices lower to compensate for that difference. I would dearly love to find a Canadian company that can do all they do, but so far no luck. The closest is from Silvano Imaging in Toronto, but even theirs is an American subcontractor. Oh well, at least it’s not “made in china”. I have nothing against the Chinese folks, but I sure do have a gripe against all the junk they are contracted to build and then we throw into our land fill sites in two months.

Although you are at garthwunsch.com, this is just the gathering place for several web domains of mine. www.avenuetwelvephotography.ca lives here ( www.a12p.ca for short). It is the home of my wedding and portrait business.
www.landscapes-north.com is my Fine Art site and it will eventually move in here too. For now, if you would like to browse my Fine Art images, please click on over to www.pbase.com/garth_wunsch

This weekend is the reunion for Lively High School… I think they call it something different now… longer name that I always screw up… but it’s still Lively High School Looking forward to that. Should have some pics to post next week.