more art and a night shot

Back in August I said I'd share some more of my artwork once I framed it. I was a bit busy for a while, but finally finished the last piece a few weeks back. This first one is a Aboriginal painting I picked up on my first trip to Australia back in May of 2007 (hard to believe it's been that long now...). The artist is Margaret Scobie, and I liked her work from the first time I saw it. I had this stretched over a frame and wired so I can hang it any direction I please, although I believe this is the way Margaret intended it to be hung.

This piece was given to me as a gift in appreciation for some "pro bono" photography work I did (I didn't have a work visa while living in Oz), by the non profit company that Kimba worked for at the time. It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to frame it, but now it's already one of my favorite pieces and the wall it hangs on compliments it well I think.



I picked this piece up in Jerome, Arizona at an artist co-op gallery during my trip around the states last year. It is a gelee print of a photograph of white aspens and my photo of it here doesn't do it justice, you really have to see it up close to appreciate it. I picked up several other pieces on this trip that I still haven't framed yet, and also one more from my trip from Australia.



This last piece is a framing web site's re-creation of my real framed photo. I tried several ways to photograph it and none of them turned out well due to the size and placement of it (4 feet wide and hanging in the living room with way to many light sources causing problems). Please imagine it with a wider and slightly darker frame, and you'll get the idea. It is one of my favorite pictures from Australia of Uluru, and in getting the print made I found my connection to the local artist community/galleries and new photo club that I'm getting more involved with now.



Which brings me to this photo I'm working on right now (hence the watermarks on this one). My camera club went out last Sunday night with a local photographer and we did some night shooting of this artwork entitled "Light Reading".
It was challenging to shoot due to the extreme brightness of the blue neon lights in the sculpture. I did bracketing shots (seven photos spaced one f-stop apart), and then merged them in this trial version software, so I can compare it to the results using Photoshop later on.
The advantage I see so far is the ease of merging and processing the shots. This software would also make HDR photos easier to process, which is something I'm still experimenting with as well.
Oh and the part that makes me chuckle is that Photomatix has two programs within it for combining shots, and the one I found that worked best for this photo is called...Fusion.