I Married a Photographer

We have really thrown our time and efforts into our stands for the next two big events Bloomsburg’s Car show and the Art Fest.  Designing and ordering t-shirts, banners, making up order forms, our days have been packed with planning, working, eating, sleeping and more planning. Its a lot of work but enjoyable.  It finally feels like we’re taking our raw ideas and making a business name for ourselves.  I find that with each step we take business-wise, we’re eons from where we started.
Most recently, Dean has worked on a set of shots from a car show that feature the sexy parts of cars.  He calls it car porn, which he posted on his flickr account.  The collection consists of single shots that may or may not have been cropped, to show the off curves and sexy features of these amazing vehicles.  When he was working on these, I only saw one of the finished images. It was the grill of an old Dodge (I’m guessing), the car was a shiny deep blood/maroon red, of course it was immaculate!  The man who had it at the show wasn’t the owner but he told me that he’d pass our card on to him.  What I thought was unique about this car was it’s grill, long, lean and clean it had this sort of boastful look to it.  Proudly sitting in a neat row with lots of other well kept vehicles, my eye was drawn to it.  Dean took a few different views of this car but this single final shot was so sharp, I was speechless. Take a look through the entire set, let us know what you think.  Another one of my favorites is the one of the rumble seat.

About a week ago, Dean mentioned to me in passing, that the Degenstein art show was coming up soon.  After all of the normal life events, we’ve been busy organizing and cleaning at the house along with working 40 hour weeks.  So, yes, it slipped my mind.  One morning, while I was at work, I had a chance to research the artist submission dates. One day, we had one day. Ugh!

Luckily, I don’t go into panic mode very easily. I called the usual suspects, to see if I could get some last minute matting to enhance the photos.  Of course the only day I need it, is the day she happens to be closed. In a moment of clarity, I thought that maybe we should just take what we have, re-mat and ref-frame some pieces and submit them. Since last year, Dean has done a lot of different works such as, the abstracts and the vehicle HDR’s, most recently we’ve been working on night photos playing around with the lighting.  Until we get some actual studio equipment, using just the SB-800 is tough.  We’ve found that in most cases that one flash simply does not do the trick.  With that said, we concluded to submit, “Enlightened”, “Cracked Stone [ala Brett Weston]” and “Union Tree”.  At last year’s competition, a photo of a sepia tree won first prize, Dean and I figured that we couldn’t go wrong entering a tree, a wall and one that sends a bit more of a message (please read the chalkboard).

I chose the matting cleverly, using colors that enhanced the images.  For the “Cracked Stone” piece, I used a sharp looking, satin-like, black mat which really made it look even more moody.
Thursday evening came, we went to the artist’s reception saw lots of photos of birds, bees and flowers.  One of the other artists there has kind of the same feel as Dean’s photos, subject moody, dark, interesting.  Her image was very well processed, and cleanly framed, she was awarded first place in the advanced photography, rightfully so.  Second place was a Hallmark looking image of a book and lantern on a window sill with a lighthouse in the background, honorable mention -a staircase.  Ugh!  That’s really all I can say.
Now I do agree that not everybody has to have the same taste in art but I suspect that some of the chosen winners had a relationship with the society or the judge.  I am not certain if the artist’s names were made known to the judge but I have a hunch that it was common knowledge.  With all of that said, I think we’ll lean toward larger prints and maybe a more dramatic frame, next time.