Hey all! It’s been probably over two months since i uploaded anything new. I have been busy getting engaged and starting premarriage counseling and going to school and working and….my poor camera has sat in a case in my closet, probably angry at me for giving it so much attention for so long, and then deserting it except when I need to take the occasional snapshot. I haven’t even cleaned out my CF card in that long – because I haven’t even filled it up!!

in the meantime though, i’ve been lucky enough to be featured on the home pages several times, win a contest or two, and still mysteriously be racking up views of my art. :) i now am closing in on 25,000 – cool! :)

as i mentioned before, i’ve also begin selling my wares on Etsy, which tak…

Does anyone here use Etsy? I’ve recently become interested…ok, obsessed….ok, addicted…to the site and trying to promote myself on there. there are relatively few photographers and I made a sale within a week and a half.

I decided to sell my art printed on halide paper – a metallic/pearlescent look. So far I’ve concentrated my theme (with one exception) to my closeups of nature. For a while I intend to keep it that way – at least until I run out of that kind of art.

So, if you like my work but don’t like being confined to the options on RB, or just want to buy straight from the artist (myself), check out my Etsy shop! If there’s an image here which I also sell on Etsy, I have a link on the RB image so you can get there straightaw…

Hey all!

Just wanted to let you know that my calendars are done and ready for your Christmas gifting! I really, really wanted to make an IR one – but not this year. :) There are seven options:

Images of Entropy. This one features macros of rust and decay – in bright colors and fascinating patterns.

Summer in the Outer Banks. Breezy sandy beaches, remote islands, and lighthouses…need I say more?

The Glory of the Columbine. Who knows – maybe someone loves columbines enough to buy a whole calendar of them!

Everyday Mysteries. Things you probably don’t notice…

A Bouquet. My favorite florals from this year! The favorite so far!

The Year of the Leaf. Another effect of my late fascination with leaves…

Still Life & Structural. A unique blend…

I am so excited. I was recently asked to be the photographer for my university’s music department. This will involve building up a significant library of images for use in brochures and web sites, as well as many other recruiting and promoting materials. I’m also asked to run some of the older ones through some work in Photoshop to make them useful and attractive for these same purposes. I am thrilled to actually make money doing things that I love doing. Plus, I will get to attend (and see up-close) premiere concerts and recitals, as well as shoot lectures from famous musicians. How exciting!!! I just had to share it with my fellow Bubblers!

There is a related issue regarding the legal side of things. I’d like to retain full ownership of my images and keep the u…

I’m realizing the importance of continually evaluating my gallery to make sure what’s there is my current best. Perhaps photos were my best 8 months ago, but boy have I learned a LOT since then! I thought it was wonderful when I first took it; now I hardly want to look at it. So why should I make anyone else undergo the same suffering? :) I’m sure I’ll say the same thing in a year about the photos I’m taking now. But that’s the beauty of improving and changing. Cleaning out, having new distaste for something you created a while ago, just means you ARE improving and changing. It means you have a newer, better standard! If I can’t tell if I took a photo yesterday or five years prior, maybe I need to step out of my box, and work on being a lit…

By Nikki Trexel

I was in North Carolina’s Outer Banks for ten days, a summer paradise for one Midwestern girl who’s never been to the ocean. Many photos were captured, such as A Sandy Stairway to Heaven, and the ocean was lapping at our ankles and The Shadows Ascend. But this, one of the first taken at the beach, immediately stuck out to me as having potential:

And so you can compare them side by side, here’s the final product.

The first thing I did when I opened the photo was crop a little extra space off the bottom and left-hand side. This gives the photo a more balanced composition. The sand shouldn’t be the first thing the eye lands on. I also rotated it one or two degrees counter-clockwise to even out the horizon line (Image>Rotate Canvas>Arbitrar…

i’m sorry for writing so many journals lately…i don’t like to hog your activity monitors but i enjoy feedback, and it’s great to share photography-related stuff with someone who doesn’t look at me like i’m speaking another language when i talk about camera equipment. :)

oh, first of all, i have a picture up for a little contest: would you terribly mind going and voting for it? the website seems to be mostly funny shots of dogs and kids, so i wondered if my nuns-buying-lingerie would have a chance. they put it up as the first one though. i get like $50 if i win. :)
See the voting list here – my image is called ‘Translation Not Necessary’

anyways, i am just really excited about a couple of new things i have gotten in the last month or …

Hey friends,

Many of you have heard about the group called The Gift of Art, the charity fundraiser run by the folks in A Photographer’s Craft. All benefits from artwork purchased from that group (and not from the artist’s portfolio) goes to the National Cancer Institute. I know many of us are starving artists, but if you are looking for gift ideas for someone who perhaps is hard to buy for, please consider buying artwork from The Gift of Art. You can give two gifts at once – and the person receiving the artwork will be thrilled to know their gift also promoted cancer research. This could be a very meaningful gift especially for those who have been affected by the rages of cancer. Please take a few moments to think about how you could help. I’m sorry if you…

Hooray, today I logged on to RB and saw that I have 10007 views! :) This is great news as most of you know because now I can start clearing out images that aren’t doing my gallery any good.

So I apologize if your favorite image is taken down. I’m doing the selections MOSTLY based on fewest views and favoritings.

So thanks very much to all who have viewed my art. I’ll stop posting braggardly journals now. :)
Nikki

Hey friends.

For a while I’ve known I needed to “clean house” and remove some images in my folio that weren’t really gaining me any credit in the photography realm. It is a hard thing…a very hard thing. It is strange that many (not all) of the shots that I love the most are the ones with the fewest views, but it makes house cleaning tough.

Right now I’m pretty close to hitting 10,000 views. If I removed the images now, I’d have several hundred views taken off that counter. This sounds pathetic…but I kind of want to hit 10k before I remove my weak photos from the pool. You know where this is going, can you all go look at my….JUST KIDDING. :) Actually, I’m hoping you will let me know if you think any of my pictures are weaker…