One of my more exciting moments in the last month (OK, so maybe I'm not that exciting) was the discovery of my photo published in the HOW Magazine Design Annual (well, actually it was the Ringling catalog that won accolades, but they chose the spread with my piece to showcase in the magazine) quite by accident. It happens to be one of my favorite magazines (you should check it out www.howmagazine.com) and I get as excited as a little school girl on the last day of school when the design annual comes out. So anyway, I was looking through it and all of the sudden I saw my picture on one of the pages! So cool. However, they neglected to give me the artist credit next to my image, which was a bit of a bummer. I did request the correction for next months issue, and they agreed (and were very nice about it by the way - yay HOW staff), so look out for it (I'm not sure if it will be just my name, or an image representation).
(bottom right corner, photo of the lovely Taylor Lewis, cousin, muse, and model extraordinaire).
After discovering this, it made me wonder what else was out there that I didn't know about, so of course, praise the Internet, I Googled my name, and low and behold, I've been published a lot more then I knew. One of my favorites was on the Ringling website (www.ringling.edu) which told about the selection process of my "Taylor" image for the cover of "Creative Loafing" last year. I'd never even heard that story! By the way, you'll find that this image has been popping up everywhere (especially if you are local) - apparently any work you create at Ringling - or art school in general - becomes theirs to use for what ever promotional purposes they see fit - which I will never complain about. In fact, I am quite proud that they choose to use this for advertisements all over the world - Tay and I are semi-famous!
I have also been doing volunteer work for the Heart Gallery of Sarasota (www.heartgallerysarasota.org) which you will find a link to on www.joodcreative.com and on my Facebook page. This is an awesome organization, which my dear friend Peter Acker got me involved in, photographing children who are up for adoption. Peter puts his heart and soul into this project, and for that he is my hero. Please take the time to go to the website and check out the stories and photos of these amazing children (and see if you can guess which one I photographed...it shouldn't be hard if you know me). There are so many kids out there who need homes.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we do photo restoration and custom invitations...here's an example where I combined the two for a birthday invitation (which just happens to be for my Grandpa, so I may be slightly partial in my love for this one). The tag line is from his favorite song, and the picture is actually of him (he'll kill me for posting this on the Internet, but Grandpa, it's a good payback...) about 30+ years ago. If you ever wondered where my keen fashion sense comes from, now you know! Contact information has been changed to protect the innocent.
I think it's so much more fun and personal than the boring store-bought kind. It's handy to have a photographer/designer/artist extraordinaire in the family. My Grandma got a huge kick out of this (and as I said, paybacks, Grandpa) but made me promise not to make one for her (I had my fingers crossed behind my back, just for the record).
Anyway, if you are interested in having something similar made for your next gathering, or as stationery or custom greeting cards, etc, let me know. I love doing this kind of thing. Seriously. Check out the ones I did for a private client (photographs too) for the holidays this year...(these were so fun to shoot and design, by the way)...
OK, that's more than enough information for two days. Lets see how good I am at keeping this up - no promises, but I think I may be on a roll.
xo-j
