Lesley Smitheringale Fine Art

Featured Website: Fractal World Gallery

I recently came across this visually beautiful website which showcases fractals which are available to purchase or simply to gaze at for their beauty. You can access the website here and I have included a few fractal art pieces to inspire you.

Garden Guests Diary - Dragonflies, up-close & personal [13 March 2008]

I have always loved dragonflies but have never been able to get up-close & personal with them until I started photographing them using a macro lens. I really adore this lens and taking shots with it is my favourite passion in my photographic endeavours. As an artist, I get such a buzz when I look at the macro images on my computer screen and visually indulge in the patterns, textures and colours nature has to offer. It doesn’t get any better than this and it is also very educational as I am learning about all the creatures with whom I share my garden. Here are a few of the dragonflies and damselflies I have managed to capture so far.

l to r: Australian Tiger Dragonfly & Fiery Skimmer Dragonfly

l to r: Common Bluetail Damselfly & Aurora Blue Damselfly

I also discovered this fantastic video about dragonflies by David Attenborough and after watching it, I now see these delicate creatures in a new light. Nature is full of surprises …. Check out more insect photos on my website

The Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition 2008

This competition is held annually and aims to find the most stunning and original wildlife pictures taken by photographers worldwide of all ages. It costs £20 to enter online and the closing date for online submission is Monday 31 March 2008.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition is an international showcase for the very best photography featuring natural subjects. The competition is owned by two UK institutions that pride themselves on revealing and championing the diversity of life on Earth - the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

Being accepted into this competition is something that wildlife photographers, worldwide, aspire to. Professionals win many of the prizes, but amateurs succeed, too. That’s because achieving the perfect picture is down to a mixture of skill, vision, originality, knowledge of nature and luck. Each year thousands of entries are received and judged by a specially selected expert panel. The winners are announced at an awards ceremony that takes place each October at the Natural History Museum, London.

OVERALL WINNER 2007

“Elephant Creation” by Ben Osborne

“I staked out this waterhole in Botswana’s Chobe National Park for three weeks, taking pictures from my vehicle of thirsty elephants and other animals coming to drink. Sometimes the waterhole overflowed, and this huge bull was the first to indulge in a head-to-toe spa. I focused on the centre of the action, an explosion of texture and colour.’ Africa’s elephants are both admired and persecuted. In the 1980s, numbers were halved because of the ivory trade, banned in 1989. However, some southern African countries claimed selling ivory helped fund conservation programmes and in 1997 were allowed some exports to Japan. That was overturned in 2000 by the Convention in Trade of Endangered Species, until a reliable way to monitor illegal killing is established.”

OVERALL WINNER 2007- YOUNG WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER

 
“Monkey Moment” by Patrick Coming”

“Last year I went on holiday with my parents to Costa Rica. Monkeys used to pick fruit from the trees around our villa. One day, these squirrel monkeys climbed on the balcony rails. They stayed for a long time, so I had time to take some pictures of them playing. Squirrel monkeys are one of the smaller New World species, those living in Mexico and northern and central South America. They live in large groups, but split into smaller groups during the day to feed on berries, fruits, seeds, insects and small invertebrates. Like many New World Species, they are vulnerable to habitat loss.”

VISITOR’S CHOICE AWARD - SPECIALLY COMMENDED

“Meercat Moment” by Shem Compion

“This pup and its siblings were with an adult babysitter, in South Africa’s Tswalu Kalahari Reserve. As they sat out in the sun, a hornet flew by. Usually very vigilant animals, always on the look out, thoughts of danger immediately turned to those of lunch. For a moment, these two were transfixed. “Meerkats are extremely vigilant - their lives depend on them spotting raptors flying overhead. They also live in colonies and are highly social, teaching their young, for example, how to extract stings from insects. They eat mainly insects, but also eggs, lizards and rodents. Meerkats belong to the mongoose family, closely related to genets and civets.”

I personally adore the photograph of the meerkats - just look at that little pup with its tiny nose up in the air, checking out the hornet! Amazingly brilliant photography.

Enter the competition here and check out the details.

Nature’s Miracle re-visited

A while ago I posted an incredible photograph of the metamorphosis of a Monarch butterfly and I was pleased to receive this e-mail from the photographers. Here is this wonderful photograph.

Hello,

I just happened to search my name on Google and it came up with your web site and my image of the Metamorphosis of a Monarch, which I called “Nature’s Miracle.”

I am pleased you liked it. My friend, Judy Switt and I took these images on slides many years ago over a period of 2 weeks. A couple of years ago, I scanned all individual slides into my computer, and designed this image for Nature’s Best Competition. It was the big winner in the Creative Digital Category and later when they celebrated their 10 year anniversary, it was chosen as one of the “Best of the Best.” (unfortunately, they cut off the bottom of my flower in the last issue and on the web which really changed the composition).

It has won several awards since then and I have enjoyed sharing it with schools as an educational tool and with ministers as an inspirational tool with the message that your life can change.

It would indeed be a miracle for a photographer to come on something like this. But I am happy that it I was able to make a picture of the miracle of the birth of a butterfly.

Sincerely,

Ms. Gordie Corbin

gordie.corbin@erols.com

NEWSFLASH

I just wanted to thank you for putting the entire image on your site.  I was so disappointed when Nature’s Best Magazine cropped off some of the image.

This image will be hanging in an exhibit in Harmony Hall, in Prince George County, MD from April 14- June 14.  The exhibit is called “Six Friend: A Photographic Journey” There will be about 14 framed images from each of us.
We are all good friends who met through the North Bethesda Camera Club.

Thanks again.
Gordie Corbin

Thrilled to announce my very first book in print!

I am so excited about this project which I started a while ago but it is only now available to purchase from Blurb Book Store.

This photo journal contains a selection of my flora and fauna photographs taken in 2007, in and around my garden in the Redlands area of Queensland, Australia. I have already purchased a copy which I am thrilled with and it is sitting with pride on my coffee table. It is a deluxe, hard-cover book in large, landscape format - 13×11 inches (33×28 cm) with 68 pages of full colour high-resolution photographs. Here are some photographs of it plus you can also download the first 13 pages in PDF format from the Blurb site.

Featured Artist - Eric Wilson

I stumbled across this amazingly talented British artist who happens to be exhibiting his work on the same site as myself. I am a bit in awe of Eric’s work and having done pastels myself, he is in another league. See for yourself.

Eric Wilson has established himself as one of Britain’s leading wildlife artists, a multi-award winner whose paintings are now widely collected throughout the world. His artistic ability was evident from his earliest schooldays; “Eric has an artistic talent way beyond his years” wrote his art teacher in 1967. As a child of Scottish parentage, Eric would spend his formative years roaming the highland mountains of Scotland where his lifelong love of wild places was born. It was natural and inevitable that Eric would combine his talent with his love of wildlife and become a wildlife artist. Accuracy & attention to detail are hallmarks of Eric’s work, his adventurous research trips take him to some of the remotest wilderness areas on the planet.

Some of Eric Wilson’s artworks which are available to purchase on his website.

l to r: “Greeting the First Snows of Winter”, oil on canvas & “Gorilla - Zaire”, pastel

l to r: “European Eagle Owl”, oil on board & “Male Polar Bear at Sundown”, pastel

Eric Wilson’s Website

Eric Wilson’s Blog where he has some step-by-step tutorials which are well worth a look.

Featured Artist - Nicholas Di Genova

Nicholas Di Genova was born in Toronto in 1981 and works like a portraitist documenting the post-human future. He draws and paints horrific, yet innocent machine/animal carcass hybrids, building a protective community. Each character has its own unique and detailed story, as though from a yet unwritten comic book. In the over-arching story, the machines have taken to incorporating animal parts in the monster vehicles they build. It’s the old carcass-as-infrastructure routine.Di Genova’s characters often appear first in ink on paper. Making post-human robotic anthropomorphism look so hopeful and, well, human, is a feat in itself. Di Genova draws life into all his creatures through meticulous detail. Animal hides rot and scar with myriad dots and patches, carefully rendered in greys and greens against pink and blue backdrops.by Kevin Temple from nowtoronto magazine

Nicholas Di Genova spends over 12 hours a day in his studio, working with abstract ideas and ambitions that makes for inverted normality found in art galleries across North America.

l to r: “Chicken Hounds”, “Greater Turkey-Hydra” & “Upright Shepherd Waddler”

Nicholas tells Jordan Chalifoux from format magazine

I’m from a pretty small town and when I was there, there wasn’t really much to do. There was an arcade and comic book store. So, I really got into comics when I was a kid and read comics for eight years and I started drawing my own comics. I started making up all these creatures, I was always much more into the monster comics and super hero comics and then when I moved to Toronto I started to get into street art and use that imagery on the street.

For a lot of my work, my technique is pretty straightforward, ink and watercolour on paper. I use a lot of source materials in my work, so my studio is totally covered in layers of books. For the mylar paintings (the stuff with colour), the technique is very similar to that of traditional animators: ink on one side of the mylar, animation paint on the other. I use a dipping pen for all of my ink work, which somewhat explains the areasof drips; sometimes those damn things just explode and really f… stuff up.

from art & design magazine

Nicholas Di Genova’s website

Nicholas Di Genova’s blog

Person Nicholas Di Genova

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Featured Artists - Ellie Young & Sally Aurisch

Ellie Young is well known in the photographic art community for her contribution to alternative and historical printing processes. She runs courses at Gold Street Studios at James Lane in Trentham East. Ellie is currently showing “Miscellanea Photogenica” which is a homage to the father of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) at PhotoSpace Gallery in Collingwood, Victoria, Australia http://www.photospace.net.au Here are some of Ellie’s photographs from the exhibition.

l ro r: “Love in the Mist # 2″, “Gum Leaf” & “Chinese Lantern # 1″

Sally Aurisch is Italian trained. Born in Western Australia she has painted most of her life. She prefers to work on fine Belgium Linen and usually prepares it herself using traditional methods. Her interest revolves around the spirit of nature. There is also an otherwordly look in otherwise ordinary subjects. She returns to paint in Italy most years but also makes annual art trips into Australia’s outback to re-charge and connect. Here are some of Sally’s artworks which can be seen at the Charles Hewitt Gallery, Darlinghurst, NSW, Australia. http://www.charleshewitt.com.au

l to r: “Charity”, “Oyster in Storm” & “Owl Considers Eggs”