Seven Days…..

Right well so there it is, 7 days to go and the exhibition opens, am I finished? No. Am I ready? No. Am I nervous? Hell yea, and I have every right to feel so, just like anybody else exhibiting for the first time, don’t believe me then I dare you to put your best foot forward and present your work to the general public for total critiquing, yes though I have had two sets of different class mates over my time at the college they have both had the opportunity to critique my work as I have had with theirs, it was always open, honest, sometimes brutal but only ever with the purest and best intentions at heart, we are all artists and we respect each other and the works that are produce and we appreciate total honesty rather than fake congratulations, and I guess that would be the same for anybody true to themselves and their works as well.

My presentation of the works I have created will be an interesting event in its own right, I have the use of a whole room to myself so no other artists works will be on display there, that I am chuffed about, it gives me the feel that I am truly exhibiting my own work in its own place, a little daunting but extremely exciting and satisfying at the same time, to get gallery space on your own here either costs or it’s who you know and how well you get on with them or a committee, however there are very empathic artistic inclined patrons out there that have devoted themselves to offering free/cheap space for local recognized and not so recognized artists to show off their works, without patrons like them emerging artists would struggle severely in a commercial world dominated by cheap knock off ready made prints.

There is and always will be a place and space for real artists to show and create, the public needs contemporary and historical art in their lives, it fulfills gaps they don’t realise are there and connects them to the rest of mankind and history of the world, art is forever and artists have from the very beginning been an extremely important part of social and historical importance. Not all art is accepted by all every time but none the less regardless as art it still has its place in the world and is beauty in somebodies eyes.

I hope this to be the beginning of several exhibitions, shared and solo, private and open to the general public, my art will and always have a point of contention for a few for others it will be  amazement and awe, people will always question the hows and whys, this is part of my being an artist, creating beautiful, controversial and seemingly impossible photos without the aid of digital manipulations, a place to leave a mark and possibly inspire others to use their cameras to the fullest ability and to trust their minds and their minds eye, it is always easier to take the easiest path presented to you, ie photoshop but the satisfaction of taking and create an image that creates questions and fills the senses is extremely rewarding and worth the blood sweat and tears and many sleepless night.

In saying about photoshop I will come to its defense, it is a valuable tool for the modern digital photographer, I myself use lightroom so that I can import and export pictures, save them from tiffs to jpegs and have all the metadata there and present on them, metadata is your friend make sure you keep all your original files saved with this before you use a copied version to mess around with, this way you will always have the original that you can fall back on and create other images or use it for stock photos.

Stock photos: a must for every photographer, does not matter what you are taking, people, animals, landscapes, plants even the skies take it all in and keep the very best of the categories in folders on a separate portable hardrive as backups if a client is ever looking for that look, you can have something on hand to show them and idea, concept that fits their ideas.

Right so here is the teaser from one of my final prints, framed and ready to go.

Roadside Memorial