My first giveaway ended yesterday, June 5th 2010. The winner has been notified and it all went very well!
Thank you to everyone who participated in the Great Greeting Card Giveaway. It's always nice to find new people in the forest of people on the Internet. Also, your comments were very inspiring! They gave me great ideas of other photos I'll be adding to my Etsy shop, thank you.
The winner of our inaugural giveaway is debbiekl. Congratulations to you! I'm sorry you all could not win, but keep in mind that all of these cards are now for sale in my Father's Day Cards selections, and discounts are available for multiple card purchases. I'll be making 8x10 prints available for some of these images as well.
Future giveaways are in the works, announcements will be made here and on Facebook. To find out about upcoming events, either subscribe to my blog or join my Facebook page. Many of you might be interested in the next series of articles I'm working on, about how to print your own cards. So, for anyone thinking about printing and selling your own cards, or just making your own family photo cards for holidays, don't miss these informative blogs with detailed steps and tips from my experience.
Thank you all for entering and sharing your thoughts.
An excellent question has been posed by Holly from Five Little Gems on Etsy. She's created a treasury... a collection of items from different Etsy shops in a common theme, asking, "Do you want to touch my monkey?"
Definitely! You'll want to as well when you see the great assortment of sock monkeys, puppet monkeys and new born monkey photos. It's all very creative.
I'm very happy that my Red Monkey photo was included in the treasury, thank you Holly!
Which monkey did Dieter from Sprockets have in mind when he too posed the same question? Could it be this photo?
Laura
I am very proud to announce our first giveaway! I have selected four greeting cards to give away to one lucky winner. The cards include one Father's Day card, one industrial photo card and two nature photo cards.
In honor of Father's Day coming up, one of the four images I have selected is an actual vintage photo from about 1914 that I've restored. This photo shows a man standing on the road by an open-air car from that era. He is wearing fashionable goggles (pushed up on his head), a necessity when driving on dirt roads! The image is printed with a slight sepia tone and at the top is a pale blue background and says "Happy Father's Day" in dark blue.
Each card, with an original photography image printed on the front, is blank inside, ready for your own message. I personally print these cards on the finest quality 60lb linen card stock that is acid free. They have a subtle linen finish, perfect for fine art photos. On the back will be the name of the original photo and the photographer's name. They come with matching linen envelopes.
Please see the cards at my Etsy shop where you will be able to zoom in on the cards to see the texture of the card and images.
So how do you win these unique, artist cards? Easy! Leave a comment below about this giveaway, the photos, my Etsy shop or about yourself. I'll be posting updates here or on my Facebook page before the giveaway is over, but make sure your comments are posted on THIS blog post to be counted.
The last day to leave your comment/entry will be Saturday, June 5th 2010. The winner will be chosen from a random number selected independently from randomizer.org. I will contact the winner by email (whichever you use as your id for the comment) to get your address for mailing.
I will send the cards right away after receive your mailing information, so that you will have your cards in time to give or mail out before Father's Day. The winner's name or username (your preference) will be announced here on the blog and on my Etsy shop.
Future giveaways are in the works, the next using Twitter as well, so be sure to subscribe to my blog and join me on Twitter and Facebook for announcements.
Thank you everyone and good luck!
Our first giveaway will begin tomorrow, May 24th 2010. I am very excited to present our first fine art giveaway just in time for Father's Day. We'll be giving away a free greeting card package, so you don't have to give your favorite guy the same boring greeting card from the grocery store.
I'll be selecting cards from my Etsy shop as well as two images/cards not yet available for sale. This will be a special preview of those two new items that will become available only after the giveaway.
The exact prizes and deadline to enter will be announced tomorrow. I can tell you that the only way to enter is by leaving a comment on tomorrow's blog. It couldn't hurt to also subscribe to my blog and join Laura's Prints Facebook page, but that's just so you don't miss the giveaway and announcement of the winner! Our winner will be selected by randomizer - which selects a number at random from the number of comments or entries we get on the giveaway post.
I look forward to reading your comments on this great giveaway. We'll be having more in the coming months.
Laura
This print is available as a buy-one-get-one sale for a limited time. This would be perfectly paired with the sepia tone Swamp photo from my earlier post.
Check back soon for tips on how to create your own dark and vampirey kind of photos.
Laura
Last time, I spoke about being able to take great photos with your talent, not the most expensive camera. The photo below is the example of this. It was taken with that fixed-lens camera and is still one of my favorites. This is also available for sale as a BOGO for a limited time at Laura's Prints on Etsy.
Now for your first photo and story. The photo below was one of those brief windows of opportunity to take a shot. It was at the end of my eastern seaboard car trip, where we stopped at one of the plantations in South Carolina. Driving back out the long "drive way" road I looked to my left and yelled, "stop!" When I looked out the car window at this scene it just seemed to be perfectly framed and composed.
The sun was growing dimmer and I still had to grab my tripod and set up the camera, but when I turned it on, I had exactly two shots left on my memory stick.
TWO? So of course, I wasted the first shot by thinking I could handhold the camera. No time to erase. Plop it on the tripod, dang it! And boom. I got the shot.
This photo, Swamp, conveys so many things to me as I hope it will for you. As a photographer is says to me, don't hesitate, don't wait, take the shot.
The swamp, all swamps, have a particular depth and feeling of the unknown. And they're creepy! I love creepy - Anne Rice creepy. On some days it reminds me of New Orleans, which makes me think of the Garden District, and that leads me to imagine witches and vampires because of the books I love of Anne Rice's (back when she weaved such wonderful stories). All of these leaps and connections happen as fast as a synapse, come to think of it, they are synapses!
One gentleman who purchased a print of Swamp remarked that he found the photo mesmerizing and it reminded him of his family and home in New Orleans. I wonder if his kindred consists of any witches or vampires.
If you would like your own print of Swamp, please visit my Etsy shop.
"...the swamp rising on either side of us, a great wall of seemingly impenetrable cypress and vine. I could smell the stench of the muck, hear the rustling of the animals," Interview with a Vampire, Anne Rice.
Laura
Welcome to my photography blog. Though I love photography, my interests are not so monolithic. I might talk about Photoshop or Lightroom tips, or printing techniques, computers... well, those all relate to photography! Okay, web design, traffic grievances (say on the way to a shoot?), other artists and desktop wallpaper are all topics that pop up on this blog.
I am Laura Hardesty and if you really want to read more about me you can see my bio page on my portfolio site. You can see more about my photo exhibits also.
The main purpose for this blog is to share my passion for photography and the creative process behind my photos available for sale at my Etsy shop. Some photos are the result of a great deal of analysis of a subject (as long as it is inanimate!) and many shots, in hopes of getting one great shot. Some images are a whim, taken instinctively as I see the rapidly fleeting opportunity about to escape.
I'll be honest about my work, so that fellow photographers might find something useful for their own work. I like to give background information on the photos, such as why I took that particular shot of a certain subject, so as to share the story it tells to me. That way when you decorate your home or office with one of my photos you might think of that story when you walk by it.
Look for giveaways and BOGO (Should I admit I spent some time at first trying to figure out how this acronym worked out to Bring Your Own Bottle!) offers on my prints (some of you are still wondering... buy one get one) and free desktop wallpaper of my photography.
Here's my first giveaway, my first insider revelation, the poop, the scoop: The great arcanum of being an accomplished photographer is NOT having a big fancy camera, it is having a unique perspective and a way of appreciating the environment and things around you.
Some of my best photos were taken with a fixed-lens, 5 megapixel digital Sony camera. It was the F707 that had a remarkable zoom lens and manual settings. That, if you are an artist / photographer at heart, is all you need to get going. I'll talk more about this later on.
Laura
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