BIG THANKS

Once in a great while, special people come into your life, and photographer Aline Smithson is that person to me. I first met Aline when I began taking "The Next Step: Getting Exposure in the Fine Art and Documentary World" at Julia Dean in April of 2007. Aline has turned out to be the most amazing teacher, mentor, friend, and constant encourager. Through her class I finally found a small community of fine art photographers willing to support one another. Instead of being competitive, Aline has encouraged her students to share resources and be each other's best cheerleaders. Before I met Aline, I didn't have a blog, wasn't showing any of my photography on the web or publicly, nor did I have a network of other photographers to bounce ideas off of or get feedback. Because of the course, instead of miscellaneous photos, I now have different series of work including "Curious Transport" and "Sign Language." Without Aline's influence, I know for a fact that "Sandra's Stare" would not currently be published in JPG Magazine, because I wouldn't have even tried to submit it anywhere. So today, I send out a big THANK YOU to a wonderful woman who has helped the artist within me emerge. To a fantastic friend and mentor who has shared both her heart and her knowledge - Aline Smithson!

Aline & Me at the opening of my first group gallery show "Photography Now" at the Julia Dean Gallery on October 18, 2007.


Here is some of Aline's amazing, one of a kind work:






Aline's website is alinesmithson.com and her blog is lenscratch.blogspot.com.

Lydia's Photos Make It Into Another Gallery Show!

I'm soooo excited...I just found out that my photos made it into another gallery show! This month has been tremendously exciting!!!!!! I submitted three images to the NIGHT OF THE WITCHES group show at SHOTGUN SPACE. Each photographer was allowed to send in three images with a Halloween or Autumn theme. From all the submissions, 100 images were chosen to be printed and put into monster grids to be plastered on the walls of Shotgun Space for the October 31 exhibition. The prints will be sold in unlimited Ultrachrome editions of either 8 x 10 inches (for $25) or 13 x 19 inches (for $50). My fellow
PHOTOGRAPHY NOW group galley show cohorts Aline Smithson and Liz Kuball also made it into the show!

These are the images I submitted - I don't know if just one or possibly all made it into the show.

"Marcus Halloween" (Polaroid Spectra montage of my Mom, Dad, Me and Roxy taken approximately 5 or 6 years ago on Halloween).

"Carrie Redux" (Nikon D50 digital image shot last year at a Halloween party)

"Fall Daze" (montage of fall leaves shot with a Leica Mini Zoom on Kodak Ultra Color 400 film)


Here's info about the party and gallery show. Hope you can make it there. I was planning to go to the traditional WEHO Halloween Carnival but there's no way I'm doing that now that I got into the show! :-)

What: Night of the Witches Group Show and Halloween Party
Who: You! And your friends!
When: Halloween, 8 to 11 p.m.
Where: Shotgun Space, 2121 San Fernando Rd., Suite 11, Los Angeles
Why: To show great art, put on a great party, and provide archival-quality prints at an affordable price to the L.A. community.

Reflections On Opening Night

After going to the Julia Dean Gallery the past two years and always looking up at the photos on the wall and hoping and dreaming that, "one day one of my photos will be up there," it finally happened.

Julia Dean Gallery - Photography Now Opening Night

Julia Dean and Me

My fantastic teacher/mentor/friend Aline Smithson and Me

Photography Now Group

Ray, Lydia, Aline, Derek

Sharp, Me, Sonya, Mike

Sharp Squared

Me, Jim, Nancy, Dad

Dad and Me

Me and my photos

S and L

Daniel, JR, Sonya, Mike, Lydia, Sharp

Me, Lawrence, Dan

Me and Uncle Myles

Me and Charlotte

Charlotte and Sharp

Kim, Cheryl, Susan, Sharp, Lydia

Dee, Lennard, Lydia

The show opening was hectic and lots of fun and I'm so glad that I had a video camera running the entire evening so I can take it all in again. I'll post a quicktime soon of 3 hours cut down to like a minute or so. Thanks so all my family, friends, associates, etc who came to support me and check out the show. If I had to do it all over again, I would have mic'd the area near my photos so I could have listened to all the chatter later - good, bad, indifferent, whatever. I put the video camera in my corner for a little while and captured some really interesting comments so I would have loved to have heard more. The thing that suprised me most about the reaction to my photos is that women seemed to like and respond to my distressed cars the most - and I NEVER would have guessed that in a million years. In fact the one photo I thought people in general would have the most difficulties with - a VERY distressed Ford Econoline van - turned out to be the one that people seemed to like best. So you never know. The show is up til Nov. 30 (what would have been my Mom's 76th birthday), so check it out if you can.

Show Hanging, The Beginning

showhanging_1.jpg, originally uploaded by fotonomous.