First Solo Exhibit at Wood Library
My first solo show ran the month of September at the Wood Library in Canandaigua, NY. To tell you the truth, it felt a bit like I was promoting my own birthday party since I don’t normally try to draw attention to myself. I was pleased that the opening was very well attended with friends, family, and the public turning out. It was over in a blink, and everyone seemed genuinely impressed with the images.
I tried to select images with a wide variety of subjects and locations and I posted a short narrative with each image to provide either insight to the time and place of the photo or other musings that would add to the story. Folks really seemed to enjoy reading these and certainly spent more time with the images than they would likely have otherwise.
Of course, the displayed images were (discretely) for sale, and while I am happy to say that I sold a surprising number of them, I was more interested in the opportunity to see what the public liked the best out of the thirty-five images displayed. To accomplish that, I provided ballots and asked folks to vote for their favorite five images. To encourage voting, I promised a free image to the winner of a drawing at the end of the show whose five favorites included the overall show top vote getter. (Congratulations to Ken Poole of Canandaigua, NY!)
“Glacier Rain” was the top pick. Because of two ties, seven images emerged as the favorite five. Notable to me was the fact that of the seven, five were HDR (high dynamic range) images, and one was a stitched panorama. There is always some debate in the photographic community about the use of HDR, but in the case of my work, the public has clearly spoken. It was gratifying to discover that every image in the show was on someones’ ballot.
It was a huge amount of work and expense to do the show, but it was an honor to be invited and very satisfying that the images were well received. My sincere thanks to all who took the time to come. For the benefit of those who could not make it to the show I created a gallery of the exhibit , Wood Show 2009. Keep in mind that no screen does justice to a good large print. The images are ordered in the gallery based on the votes they received. (The meerkats in “Watchin’ You Watchin’ Us” was actually a triptych and I had a group of four puffin portraits in a quad, but I had no convenient way to post them in the gallery…. sorry.)
