Images are powerful, and presenting them in various ways is what I do best, ultimately as a traditional Artist, but also as a casual photographer who increasingly appreciates photography as an Art form since purchasing a Canon EOS 20D in 2006. Photography fits perfectly into my large creative pocket, contributing to the way I see and compose with other media. It’s also beneficial, in fact necessary in this competitive business, to take advantage of anything that will add an edge to writing effective gallery exhibition proposals. Quality presentation is everything, so a good camera and computer scanner are valuable tools for recording decent color representation of Artwork.
Taking photos is a nice change from usual work, and if I’m in between projects. The camera is always conveniently on the kitchen counter and a tripod is by the door, ready for action. When traveling, the senses are bombarded with so many new and incredible things, and taking photos offers an immediate solution for managing all the beauty! Once in a while I’m fortunate to be at the right place at the right time, and some days enjoy searching for it.

The Canon EOS 20D handles varying light situations well, manually and automatically. The manual settings are better for close-ups, and the automatic feature is great for capturing fleeting weather conditions or insects that might fly away. The liberty and practicality that digital cameras offer cannot be compared to “old fashioned” standard film-cameras, not to mention the costs of film and developing. Before taking the digital leap, there was no denying the growing piles of paper photos, three quarters of which were poor quality…and the very last roll of film I took was entirely of watermelon growing in the garden! In fact it was all the activity taking place in the garden that stimulated an interest to produce better photographs.

I still think my old Canon AE1 was the best camera for detailed close-ups of flowers and insects (circa 1983 - the new ones are inferior in my opinion), but despite numerous professional tune-ups and cleaning, the shutter froze randomly and became unreliable.

 About five years ago I finally surrendered to the vast world of digital cameras and computers - it was a huge leap forward for all of my work. I can’t imagine being without these tools now. I still enjoy the old paper photos stored in albums, and from a technical standpoint my recent photos are best, but as resource material for other forms of Art they don’t need to be perfect; from a painters’ standpoint, memory works best. If photos are used as reference they are not copied directly anyway, they mainly serve to stimulate inspiration. To capture a lively likeness convincingly in a painting or drawing, it’s the experiential observations that contribute the most to the work.

While on location with the camera, as an Artist I’m also soaking up as many other details a possible: exploring color and form, memorizing lighting and sensations, studying values as if I were about to start painting or drawing. I call it “Plein Aire Memorization”! The Painter behind the camera interprets a vision the camera cannot. Likewise, there are some things the camera captures perfectly that don’t translate well into paintings. Photos are often best left as photos.

With family all living in eastern and western Canada, travel back and forth between our two countries has become part of my lifestyle. During each trip I marvel at how geography, climates and histories mold very unique lifestyles from state to state and province to province, and how each place is unlike anywhere else, even within short distances. It’s now become a mission to see and photograph as much of North America as possible, in particular the trees, because although they are my favorite subject to paint I’ll never have enough time in this life to paint them all. I love my camera!

I’m still on the fence as far as keeping the nikkiartwork blog exclusively for “traditonal” Art like painting, and having seperate websites for everything else. I consider Art as all-inclusive, and photography is so much an every day interest, some of those daily observations are posted in the nikkiartwork blog, which I consider as my main website. However, to designate photography its own uncomplicated place I developed nikkiphotography.com It is still young as a website, so is temporarily linked to FlickR where I began organizing albums about a year ago. All that work will eventually be transferred back into nikkiphotography.

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The article Websites for Artists  on my blog, nikkiartwork.com explains the benefits of creating and maintaining blogs and websites. Each photographic series also warranted a website of their own. True Colors and Heart Shapes In Nature collections are independent ongoing Art Projects, and except for upgrading quality and adding new material every six months or so, they are fairly static. 12 and 18-month Calendars of favorite images from both series are available to purchase and can be viewed in the Websites for Artists article:

True Colors - Generic Imagery, 2009 12 months.

True Colors - Generic Imagery, 18 months, Jan. 2009 through June 2010. 

True Colors - Trees of Mexico, 2009 12 months.

True Colors - Flowers of Mexico, 2009 12 months.

Heart Shapes In Nature 2009 12 months.

Heart Shapes In Nature 2009 18 months, Jan. 2009 through June 2010.