Todays featured print: Tarn Vineyards #1 (18″x12″, Transmounted Lightjet Print, Maximum edition of 5)

This image was captured in a vineyard just outside St. Beauzile in southern France – one of the most serene, beautiful places I’ve ever been fortunate enough to visit.

So here’s the deal: I’m planning an exhibition of my work in the spring. It’s actually quite a production, printing and framing an entire gallery worth of work, so I’ve hatched a nefarious scheme to help me get there… I’m making a big push to sell some prints in time for Christmas.

Art makes a unique gift that demonstrates a really personal touch but most people don’t think about it as an option when they’re bombarded with Walmart flyers and Future Shop sales. So this holiday season, I’m looking for your help to get art on walls. I hope you’ll consider spreading the word via Facebook, Twitter, email or good old word of mouth. I have prints in various sizes and price points and can arrange framing as well.

To help promote my art in time for the holidays, I’ll be posting a new print every day until Xmas. I’d really appreciate it if you would share these out to your network of friends.

This non-denominational winter holiday festival, let’s help lonely art find a home with some nice people! Check back daily for your dose of fresh imagery…

I’ve been working on this one for a long time and I’m really pleased to present my latest print, Cornish Stone. 

The image was captured on Bodmin Moor, in Cornwall, on a bitterly cold day. There was a sense of age that was palpable; like walking amongst the stones of Stonehenge… Lovely and lonely. It took a great deal of experimentation to capture that feeling in the image and final print, but here it is at last:

The print measures 21″ x 8″ and is printed using pigmented archival inks on Hahnemuehle’s Fine Art Baryta (325 gsm) paper. I’m limiting the prints to an edition of five only. Pricing escalates with each print:

• Print 1 = $400 (sold)
• Print 2 = $450 (sold)
• Print 2 = $500
• Print 2 = $550
• Print 2 = $600

Please call (+1 250 812 2431) or email if you’re interested in a print.

I got to do my first client product photography shoot today – as the photographer. It completely took over my dining room… Good fun!

We used my dining room table for the most part. The exception to this was a some jackets that required a crazy assemblage of plywood and bedsheets to present properly. After looking at the price of proper studio lighting, I went to Canadian Tire and picked up $35 worth of work lights, which did the trick just fine. I splurged on a 28″ Cameron Digital Photo Box which definitely made the small object photography a lot easier as it evens out the lighting nicely and eliminates most of the hot spots and glare. There were still some challenging items (silver-plated bowls and spoons), but the box really made a difference. It also packs down flat so it’s easy to store. If you’re thinking of setting up a little DIY studio, I’d recommend it.

Now comes the really labour-intensive part: retouching and extracting the objects from their backgrounds.

All moderenized and shiny, the new oculusdesign.ca has launched at last.

The original site still looked good but it was getting mighty old under the hood and I wanted to test a bunch of new tools & techniques to see if they had merit for client work. The result was a mixed bag (no surprise there) that I learned quite a bit from.

It was also an opportunity to update the site for modern browsers, add a blog and some social networking links and seriously overhaul the portfolio section (as well as add new work). Please have a look through and let me know what you think.

Finally, I’d like to express my gratitude to Mike Lathrop over at Big Mike Studios for bringing this to fruition.