“Butterflies are self propelled flowers” Quote by R.L. Heinlein

Join me in a 5 minute video hike and photographic safari to the Walls of Jericho with the Tennessee’s Wild Side Television show.The Walls of Jericho is a beautiful area which stretches from southern Tennessee into north Alabama. This area was protected with help from The Nature Conservancy.

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Video provided courtesy Tennessee’s Wild Side

One of the fastest growing trends in the art photography world has been printing fine art photography on canvas. Photographs on canvas have a luxurious look and feel and offer some interesting options for displaying. For example, stretching the canvas and applying a gallery wrap has become extremely popular. The gallery wrap image is mirrored, extended and folded around the edges of the stretcher bars, thus doing away with the need for a frame. This gives a modern look which is sometimes less expensive than traditional framing.

We have been reproducing my fine art photographs on canvas for many years now with great success. We have learned a few things that are important in getting the best quality and greatest longevity possible from a canvas print. We use a special canvas that is designed to be coated after the image is applied to protect the image from fading, scratching and scuffing. The canvas is then machine coated with a UV protectant sealant. It is applied by a machine rather than being hand rolled or hand sprayed. The machine removes residual dust as the coating is applied and can do a much more uniform job of application than a human can. Photographs on canvas produced in this way are projected to be fade free for 100+ years.

After 3 weeks of on and off the road traveling to photograph the fall colors, I am back eating a bagel at Panera (my other office). Spent the weekend getting some rush print orders done and I will be delivering the prints for my Water Abstraction show at Metro Arts Center shortly. Then back to fulfilling print orders  and sifting through 6000 images. I will be adding more images to the website soon. For now above is a preview of coming attractions.

I am pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit of my fine art photography at the Metro Arts Gallery on November 19th. The exhibition space is within the public area of Metro Arts Commission’s offices, located on the fourth floor of the Metro Office Building in the Richard Fulton Complex. The theme of this art show is Water Abstracts, (a favorite photographic subject of mine). The show will be open through March 2010.

Metro Arts Gallery Exhibit Opening Reception
3:00 - 4:30 p.m. November 19th

MNAC’s address and hours of operation are:

800 2nd Avenue South, 4th Floor
Nashville TN 37210
Hours: Mon.–Fri., 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Fall is one of my favorite seasons for photography. Each year I plan a trip to follow the changing colors as they roll south. This year is no exception. I am currently in the Smoky Mountains after hitting two other locations further north earlier this week. Next week will be southern Tennessee, north Alabama and Georgia. In the next few weeks I will begin posting some of the photographs from this season. The photograph above I made last year in Vermont.

What is Wabi-Sabi and what does it have to do with my photography?  Wabi-Sabi describes a Japanese aesthetic of art and living.

One of the best explanations I have seen for the term is:

“Wabi is a feeling of loneliness or solitude, reflecting a sense of nonattachment and appreciation for the spontaneous unfolding of circumstances. It is like the quiet that comes from a winter snowfall, where all the sounds are hushed and stillness envelops everything. Sabi is the suchness of ordinary objects, the basic, unmistakable uniqueness of a thing in and of itself.”
From ” The Zen of Creativity”
John Daido Loori

A few years ago a large number of my images were chosen by a client to be hung in an upscale hotel. While I was printing the images I marveled at how the image choices seemed to have picked up a theme that ran through my images. This was not a theme that I was aware of as I was creating the photographs in the field. I was so fascinated that my client had seen this thread that ran through my imagery that I was unaware of, that I couldn’t resist writing her and telling her how much I appreciated her “getting it”.

Her response was “I love your work it is so Wabi-Sabi!” I immediately began researching on the internet and at bookstores. I ended up reading and learning about a Japanese aesthetic which had permeated my fine art photography for years without even being aware of it.