Lourcey Photography

It was a sad time for Lourcey Photography this week.  My favorite model - who has been a fixture in several of my prints and Christmas cards- moved away to Florida.  Before he left, I made sure to drag him in for one last session.    I printed up one of the images to give him as a going away gift and left it sitting on my entry hall table.  It just happened to be sitting next to a portrait I painted of him earlier in the year.  It certainly made for a very interesting pairing…

The painting on the left was done early in the year - when I was trying out a new painting technique.  I was going for a soft, Old Masters look - ala an old Rembrandt painting.  The black and white image on the right is a much more detailed character study.  I was just so surprised how different the same person can look with different photographic approaches.

The details are starting to come together for my fine art show at at Vino100 in Dallas (http://www.vino100dallas.com/)  It is exactly two weeks away and I’ve got a TON of stuff to get ready before the event.  This will be the largest exhibit of my work that I’ve ever assembled- we are planning to fill the walls!  There will be several items from the fine art site (www.lourceyfineart.com) as well as a bunch of new pieces - both paintings and photographs.

 Of course, this means lots of prep work - several pieces need to be matted, framed, priced….whew.  The good news is there will be plenty of wine in the building that night, so the light at the end of the tunnel is promising!  The reception is Thursday, Aug 28 at 6:00 - please swing by and say hello!

We just got back from a relaxing week in North Carolina at the Outer Banks.   Although I tried my best to not spend my time toting the camera around everywhere - there were a few locations that I just couldn’t resist!

Not far from the beach, there is a large national park that is made up of huge sand dunes.   It was almost as if we were in the middle of a desert - very strange.

I got up early one morning and go to the park when they opened - then trudged through the sand with all my gear.  It was such an unusual setting that it was worth the trouble! 

The shot above was one of my favorite color shots - with an intesting line and very simple composition.  The one below is an infrared black and white of another part of the dunes.

Every year, I submit my four best prints to the Professional Photographers of America’s International Print Competition.  I found out this week that I had a very big year!

For starters, all four of my prints were accepted into the General Exhibit, which will be on display at the national convention next year.  It is pretty tough to do and I’ve only done it once before - so that was exciting.

The even bigger news was that TWO of my images were selected to be in the PPA Loan Collection book.   The Loan Collection is made up of the top 10% or so of the entries - so its tough to get one accepted.  I couldn’t believe I ended up with two!

I’ll eventually add these to the gallery section of the site, but thought you might like to see what they looked like.

The top image is titled - “Silent Cypress” - it was an infrared shot I took at Caddo Lake in East Texas.  The bottom image is “Take A Bow” a fun art piece, featuring a ballerina I photographed last year.  Both images were a lot of fun to create - I hope you enjoy them!

We have been doing a lot of Portrait Collages this summer.  I like them because they offer a more creative look than just having the kid kneeling in front of a fence, holding a soccer ball.  I thought you might like to see a few of the newest creations:

I created this for my son’s baseball coach.  We were looking for a cool thank-you gift and thought this would be the perfect item.  I created the portrait of his son without him knowing, then the team pitched in to get it framed for him.  One of the interesting elements of this piece is the faded scorebook in the background.  The boy’s grandfather kept score at most of our games this season, so the handwritten scorebook in the background is actually his grandfather’s handwriting.  How cool is that?

For this high school senior, we were looking to create something that highlighted her swimming and gymnastics involvement.  She was so easy to photograph and I was thrilled with the images we had to work with.  I think the final piece really tells her story.

We just got back from a great week in San Francisco.   Heather was speaking at an education conference, so we stayed a few extra days to see the city.  When it comes to vacation spots - San Francisco is tough to beat.

 On word of caution… summer means nothing in this town.  The first night we were there, the temperature dropped to 48 - in JULY!  However, it sure beats the Texas heat.  Although we mostly walked everywhere, we did rent a car for the day so we could drive a few places.  We were shocked to find out they had given us a yellow BUG!  It was actually a pretty fun little car to drive around the city.  Best of all, we never had trouble finding out car in the parking lot! 

Here we are in front of the museum, where they were showing a special exhibit on Women Impressionists. 

From there, we hit the road and headed to Yosemite.  Neither of us had ever been there and thought it would be a fun day trip.  While it offered some fabulous views, I would offer you a word of advice:  if you decide to hike up to Vernal Falls, pack lightly.  It is only a mile or so, but it seemed like it was a mile straight uphill!  Carrying a tripod and backpack full of camera gear does not make for a pleasant experience.

The walk to Mirror Lake is a much more flat walk (on a paved road).  On the way back, I decided to take a shot of the stream running alongside the road.  I ended up climbing out across the wet rocks, then had Heather hand me the camera gear.

In hindsight, this could have very easily led to disaster… but we lucked out and made it back to shore in one piece (and dry). 

Now I get to start the fun job of sorting through all the images and deciding what to do with all of them!

I just returned from Little Rock, Arkansas - where I served as a judge at their state photography convention.  I had a great time, but it was really a lot of work.  Imagine sitting in a dark room, staring at photographs all day- then assigning them a score from 1-100.  Anytime there was a disagreement about how a print should score, we had to discuss it - pointing out the good and bad points of the image.   The thing is, all the people who have entered the competition are sitting in the room observing, listening to your comments about their work.  You have to walk a very fine line between giving someone an honest evaluation of their work, while not insulting them or crushing their desire to ever enter again!

 All in all, it was a great experience.  There are a bunch of very talented photographers in Arkansas, so we saw plenty of stunning images.  I’m really looking forward to next month, when I will be doing this again in Orlando at the Florida State Convention.   It is truly an honor to have a chance to give back to the photographic community and help other photographers improve their craft. 

As I work on trying out different painting techniques, I decided to try some more abstract subject matter.  I’ve started a new series - based around using symbols and colors to create a mood or feeling.  Here is the first in the series.

Rather than tell you the title and what I was going for - I’d love to know what you think about it.  What would you title it, what kind of feeling does it evoke, etc?  Be sure to leave a comment and share your thoughts!  (please note- blog comments won’t automatically appear on the site - so don’t worry if it isn’t there right away)

I figured this week was a good time to try out using the infrared camera at the pool.   I found a couple of willing volunteers and set out to see what different effects I could produce.  We really ended up with a wide variety of looks:

My two favorites were these two:

Overall, I think we got some very out-of-the-ordinary images.  Let me know what you think!
 

We just got back from visiting friends in Houston.  It wasn’t really a photo trip - in fact, the only camera I brought was the point-and-shoot. 

We decided to catch an Astro game at MinuteMaid Park - what a cool place.  I couldn’t resist creating this image of the ballpark.   I just loved that huge wall of windows - such a great design!

The other image will be the basis for a painting, so you will have to keep an eye out for it in future blog entries.