On August 12th Karen and I arrived in Saranac Lake, New York so I could attend a photography workshop by Aaron Hobson (The Cinemascapist.... a link to his work and a link to his blog to the right. The blog is "I Shot Myself, They Did To")
Here is the link to the Barkeater Workshop + Exhibit
http://www.barkeaterphotography.com/
The journey started about 6 months ago when I was about 2 months into my obsession with photography. I stumbled across his work and was drawn to it like a fly to fresh dog shit (that in a good way of course). A couple of months go by and then I find he is doing this workshop for 8 participants over 3 days culminating with a showing in a local art gallery. Whoa!
If nothing else I wanted to learn about the person behind the work. I could see he worked outside the box and I kept going back to look at his images.
I was a bit intimidated since the application process required sending him a sample of my work. This almost kept me from applying. I had told Karen about it and she pushed me along and told me to go for it. I did.
I won't go into any lengthy discussion of the 3 days. It turned out there were 5 of us. Aaron led the way with discussions of his work and other artists work. There were a couple of hours of time spent on post processing demos and even a trip to his fathers house where we could view some of Aaron's work in the flesh. Turns out Aaron's father (the Landscapist.... link to his blog to the right) also did the printing of our work to hang at our show at the 7444 Gallery. Of course there were trips to multiple sites for shooting pictures.
Aaron led the troops with 2nd in command, Todd Smith. Todd runs the gallery and was there every step of the way with coffee and bagels in the morning, technical support, discussions of anything and everything and of course the use of the 7444 Gallery as home base. They both put in a lot of work before we ever got there. There were adds in the paper and I think even some radio announcements of the show.
Working as 1st assistant to Aaron was J.C. A year ago J C tracked down Aaron and made arrangements to come all the way from France and spend a couple of months with Aaron as his mentor. J C speaks very limited English (well... don't we all). He was great fun and a big help and was also a very willing and cooperative model. It seems his favorite drink is rum and pineapple juice. (must be a French thing)
The first day Trixy was with us as a model and wound up in many images. The 2nd day Pat came along to the shoot in the abandoned pulp mill (built on the site of an iron ore mine/forge once owned by Benidict Arnold)
What a time! The link to my pics includes smattering of images with both outtakes and snapshots as well as more serious attempts at something artistic.
The show on Saturday night was a blast. There was wine and cheese and later rum and pizza and in between about 60 people came through. While neither of my two pieces sold there were two others that were snatched up by collectors.
More to follow........
