Long Beach was our last stop on the way out of town. We got there after the sun had fallen below the horizon but nonetheless, what a sight to behold!

I made this long exposure with my “tripod” for the trip, a Gorillapod SLR-Zoom outfitted with a small Flashpoint ballhead (we had travelled by float plane and luggage restrictions meant leaving the normal ‘pod at home). Thank goodness for driftwood. The only stump on the beach provided enough elevation for an adequate POV.

Tofino, British Columbia, Canada.

Original digital painting of a piano sonata expressing the enchanting sounds of winter.

winter sonata
expressing enchanting sound
contemplates the soul

This is the second painting capturing the beauty of the four seasons. The first was yesterday’s Autumn’s Rhythm. I’ve been dreaming of a new collection that I must paint. Symbols and nature combine to express the stillness, beauty and grace of all that I feel and see through an inner landscape.

– genece hamby, contemporary artist
To purchase Winter Sonata, http://www.shibuistudio.com/wintersonata.html

Post Office, Cabezon by Evangeline Chavez

The village was started in the 1870’s and was originally called Posta, (the post),  It was the focal point for farming and raising sheep. It was also a stage stop between Santa Fe and the military outpost at Fort Wingate. It quickly grew with the mandatory saloons, blacksmith shop, stores.  Richard Heller ran the Heller Store and post office for a good many years.  Cabezon flourished  until the 1940’s. Mr. Heller died in 1947, and the Rio Puerco dried up. The post office officially closed in 1949

Iglesia San Jose de Cabezon by Evangeline Chavez

Iglesia San Jose de Cabezon, originally built in 1894, is now on private land.  It is open to the public during the year for a mass in honor of San Jose. In the background you can see Cabezone Peak.  Cabezone Peak is derived from the Spanish noun “cabeza,” meaning “head,” and “Cabezon” translates as “big head.

]]> http://markwpayne.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/advantages-of-microstock-photography-be-excited-about/ Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:32:52 +0000 markwpayne http://markwpayne.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/advantages-of-microstock-photography-be-excited-about/

Advantages of Microstock Photography / Be Excited About:

1. Create and Build a Residual Income Stream
2. Set your own hours
3. You decide what to photograph in your photo shoots: Studio, Models, Landscapes, Nature, Objects etc.
4. Make money from an existing hobby or even take it to the next level professionally
5. Earn money while your sick or even sleeping
6. Earn money for the life of the image
7. For the most part … Do the work once, upload the image to 6-15 sites, and sell sell sell
8. Small start-up costs relative to other types of business ventures
9. Be your own boss
10. Microstock Community

Best of Luck !

My Referral Links to Top Producing Microstock Photography Websites:

http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery.mhtml?id=144463

http://www.dreamstime.com/Mwp1969_info

http://www.istockphoto.com/mwp1969

http://www.123rf.com/profile_markpayne

http://us.fotolia.com/partner/200479231

http://www.bigstockphoto.com/?refid=HW16kzhvJX

Midstock Photography Sites:

http://www.mostphotos.com/mwp1969

Our Website:

www.PayneImages.com

These are the other two miniatures I recently finished painting of Lake Whitehurst in Norfolk.   I’ve enjoyed doing these so much I’ve decided keep painting in this size for a while.

Out of Monahans, West Texas we dipped due south, across the Pecos River and up the Stockton Plateau. Past the Glass Mountains, the Wood Hollows, and, beyond Marathon, we followed the old Great Comanche Trail toward the “big bend”, that portion of the Texas/Mexico border where the Rio Grande’s flow abruptly changes direction from southwest to northeast.

The landscape began to improve. Twenty six hundred forty seven miles into the trip we crossed the Santiago Mountains’ Persimmon Gap and

Octotillo ©SR Euston

entered Big Bend National Park. Spreading out to the horizon were 800,000 acres of protected Chihuahuan desert (an area larger than Rhode Island): a sea of grass, mesquite, scarlet-tipped ocotillo, prickly pear. We could see in the distance, jutting up between us and the Rio Grande, the silhouette of the High Chisos Complex, a broken jumble of desert mountains.

I guess big desert spaces scare some people, especially those used to seeing no farther than across the street. As for me, it was love at first sight.

We checked in with the volunteer ranger at the entry station. But our “Official Big Bend Greeter” turned out to be a bobcat, who, although typically a nocturnal creature, stood out in the open by the roadside in mid-afternoon, giving us a long leisurely stare before sauntering off into the mesquite. Less than a mile down the road we stopped to view a rattlesnake, sunning on the macadam. When we looked up there was a tarantula! By the time we broke camp at Rio Grande Village a week later, we’d seen such an array of roadrunners, raccoons, bats, rabbits, owls, squirrels, skunks, ringtails, insects and lizards, the coyote’s daily lunchtime stroll around the campground had come to seem pretty ho-hum.

Today as I look back, 30 years older, I mark that bobcat “howdy” as the moment my internal tectonics shifted. I knew. I had come home to the West.

Prickly Pear ©SR Euston

© Carolee Clark

“As the Farm Was Home #2″
by Carolee Clark
18″ x 24″
acrylic on wrapped canvas
$400 + $16 shipping within US

Click here for larger image.

Incepem cu o arhiva de 255 de wallpapers luate de pe czteam uploadat de boby22 ( am postat sursa si va recomand si voua sa faceti la fel).Acestea au rezolutia de 1920×1200 , sunt de calitate foarte mare si sunt foarte variate.Linkul este http://www.filebox.ro/download.php?key=minxvljom08vd19u.

Ribamontán al mar, óleo sobre lienzo.

Hoy presento aquí un nuevo óleo que acabo de terminar.

Se trata de una playa de Cantabria, en concreto de la “playa de los tranquilos” en la comarca de Ribamontán al Mar junto a Somo y Loredo y frente a Santander.Quise retratar esta bonita playa con sus rocas en primer término y con el cielo gris.

Rubén
www.rubendeluis.com

Original digital painting of autumn’s rhythm and sounds–the deep tonal quality of the season orchestrated by the cello.

colors fall to ground
notes of stillness bend and sway
blending deep, rich sounds

Autumn’s rhythm adds a deep tonal quality to life. It is richer, stronger and more contemplative. I can listen for hours to the sounds of the season; to the colorful notes falling to the ground and vibrating my heart with gratitude.

– genece hamby, contemporary artist
To purcahse Autumn’s Rhythm http://www.shibuistudio.com/autumnsrhythm.html

After yesterday’s personal disappointment and reality check it was great to do a long, slow trail ride on Pie today.  I get a lot of inspiration from the trees and the hills on these rides but working through other areas of life make it hard to follow my usual approach to my work. We tried to follow the power lines all the way to my parent’s house since that is where Thanksgiving was supposed to be. However, we couldn’t find a way through and it would have been a long ride back. Instead of seeing what was around me I was just trying to focus on moving forward. Literally and emotionally.  Riding a horse can give one that feeling.

I am frequently so inspired by the color of the leaves and branches and grasses when they are damp with mist and rain.  The problem is that the snapshot that I usually see when I want to make a new piece isn’t happening.  When I am stalled like this, I have two ways of getting back into my work and one is to just sit there and force myself to work from one of my sketches (since I have several ongoing sketch books there is plenty to choose from) or work in one of my other creative outlets.  I think I’m going to card some wool and spin some yarn.  I’d intended to make a neck gator for someone I know from the track but after yesterday’s disappointment, I’ll need to find  another reason to make some yarn.

Pie looks so lovely today I wish that I was more inspired by him to create a new horse collage of him.  The only thing that comes to mind with him is ideas for children’s books.

Do any other artists out there have suggestions for working when a bit broken-hearted?  While writing this I keep looking over something that I started this spring, I stopped working on it to finish many other pieces.  I resent it sitting there looking at me.  Sitting next to the new miter saw and the air compressor for my new nail guns.  All of this stuff just waiting for me to work.  Very annoying because I am typically prolific.  I just feel as though each piece of paper would be very heavy.  Or the colors would be too hard to find.  Or maybe I would bump into something since things are still a bit messy and then I’d get a bruise and have to stop working anyway.

I can’t believe this is me talking.  Typically I’m so into my work that I don’t think about romance but something finally changed.  I don’t think I have a biological clock so it can’t be about babies but I recently realized I don’t want to be alone.  Maybe I can make a piece about that.  How will I do that?

Maybe I can find an article in some old newspaper about someone who thought they finally found their soul mate but then realized their soul mate is an idiot.  I know there isn’t a new human emotion or emotional scenario out there.  But I don’t think I can muster the angst over a broken-heart like Frida Kahlo.  Boy she could really make something over her pain!

There is a quirky little show where the entries are to be small 8 x 10 self-portraits.  I haven’t done a self-portrait since I was in my late teens.  This could be a good time for it.

Ok, Saturday I will try to make a self-portrait.  By Sunday evening I will take a photo of it and post it up here.

I have so much to be thankful for.  What are you thankful for?

In honor of Thanksgiving here are some pictures of fall in Texas.  I love the golden colors!

Copyright Kathleen Thomas 2009

my mum went on a trip to Israel recently, a place I’ve always wanted to visit for many reasons. All conflict aside I, it is a very beautiful place, from what I’ve seen and heard. Here are some photographs she sent me while on her trip taken with a regular point and shoot camera. There are quite a lot of photos I’ll just be shortlisting them to just the worthy ;D

More to follow

Mindanao has always been a fascinating travel for me. I have climbed its highest mountains and played in its white beaches. I have also been to some dangerous places (Pikit refugee area)  to co-teach photography to young Muslim teenagers. Davao is a favorite city. Then, last February 2009, I went to Cotabato City with a filmmaker friend to document an urban community that was doing something good for the improvement of their lives. I was happy to see a community that was formerly from a  slum area try their best to get themselves out and set new homes in a better locale outside teh city. When we finished shooting one day and we strolled back to the only decent hotel in the city, we noticed the expensive-looking vehicles parked outside the hotel compound. We saw  the women dressed in their best. It puzzled us that luxurious looking vehicles would be found in a city that was poverty-stricken. It was such a deep contrast to the general landscape. I relayed this observation to a friend who had grown up in Mindanao. She said it could only be two things–drug money or political power. That’s it. You either controlled the movement of illegal drugs or was a member of a strong politically influential clan or both.  The Ampatuans have sat in power for long. What happend on Monday when 100 gunmen killed 57 (as of last count) people –where 2 lawyers and 21 members of the media were also brutally straffed and dumped into ready-made graves seems to point out how  politically-embedded , wealthy, powerful Muslim families and clans like the Ampatuans can easily forget and get so drunk on their seeming “immunity” from the law. They are  the prime suspects in a crime that can only be described as heinous, an atrocity, an inhumanity that is also unparraled in journalists’ history, according to the Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch.

Talking to a friend from an international NGO, she wondered  why  journalists were killed  in this  country when in the West, they would be there to “protect” the people who are being harrassed. They would be feared because they would tell the truth. Ideally, that’s what journalists are taught to do–to uphold the truth. Here, journalists who try to tell the truth are silened forever.

Friends are saying this could be white-washed by Gloria Arroyo’s government. But people are so damn disgusted now. They better not do that. Our Facebook pages, emails, text messages are littered with the outrage of the nation. I dont want to think this will be so easy to forget–as we usually do. On the net, I find that the Philippines just supplanted Iraq as the most dangerous place in the world. How can that be? Its a maddening, saddening event in the country’s history.

But we will not forget. We should not forget.

There is no end to the variations of color and texture that Autumn near Burton, Ohio offers. I like to think it’s God’s special gift to those who have to endure the months of searing cold and deep snowdrifts.