"The Spirit Of Niwot" mural

I am not fearless.  Trust me, I am smart enough to be completely  freaked out whenever the situation calls for it.  Taking on a public art mural project of this size, this scope, with these huge expectations and requirements, with so much technical stuff that I have never dealt with before, so many unknowns… I was in way over my head long before I even started.  But I never doubted that the whole mural experience would not only work out, but that it would be amazing.  And here we are, coming out the other side of a 165’, 14 week long epic mural creation with so many incredible experiences, wonderful people, extraordinary moments, wishes granted, dreams fulfilled, and questions answered with a resounding YES!

The first bit of magic in all this was the scariest.  Originally, this whole mural concept was proposed by the Niwot Business Association to Cy Hundley, Niwot’s most noted muralist and fine artist.  He has painted several murals here in town and my favorites are on the walls of the Niwot Market.  Cy and I have worked together on some very fun, complex projects and he invited me to join him in the planning process of this proposed Niwot mural.  I was excited and honored, and really looking forward to rejoining my friend in creating a mural for our sweet town.  That was January.  Unfortunately, by the time the approval process had wound it’s way through  the committees and departments of Niwot and Boulder County, the open bid process and acceptance, the color palate and sketch content approval, and the project was finally set to start, it was mid July and Cy, much in demand and already postponing prior commitments, was no longer available.  Cy.  Sigh.

At that point, I really, really, really wanted to paint this mural, my heart was 100% in it, and I knew that if I convinced the mural committee that I could handle the artistic process, I would somehow be able to make it all work.  I have experience managing large groups of talented and creative artists collaborating on major projects… so I was only a little freaked out…but I also have learned to just trust the process and that whatever I needed, whenever I needed it – would just show up.  I also knew in my heart that if I called Cy, he would be there for me, and I have, and he has.

And so, with Cy’s recommendation, the mural committee took a leap of faith and gave me the commission.  I put all of my artist friends on notice that at some point I would need them, I just didn’t know how or when.  And I took the first few steps of the mural process – prepping, priming, and plotting the major landmarks on the wall.   That’s when David Bowes appeared.  He will be the first to tell you, emphatically, somewhat testily, that he is not an artist.  I will emphatically, somewhat testily disagree.  It started simply, I needed someone to form a piece of sheet metal to cover a vent opening, to grind off some security bars over the pie kitchen windows (that’s right, don’t tell anyone, but the pie windows are no longer fort knox-ed and the only thing guarding racks of luscious home-made pies are a simple lock, security alarm, pit bull and karma…),  set up a work bench, solve a small water issue, figure out electricity…  I mentioned all of this to Dave, went off to the paint store, returned the next morning and everything on my prep list was done!!   I was so excited that I called Dave immediately to tell him that somehow, magically, the whole prep list had been completed, probably by random magic pixies in the middle of the night.  I wish I could plug in an audio of Dave’s British accent right here saying “Oh…yeah… that’s what you think, is it?”, but you can stop by the mural most days and hear him saying that line anyway…

So then Dave started showing up every day and pointing out that my lines weren’t straight and this isn’t level and that rail wouldn’t pass building code…. Really Dave?  Building code??  This is art, I can paint it however I want… but, if you are going to show up and boss me around, you might as well grab a brush and make yourself useful…

The next thing I know, Dave is pulling chalk lines and levels and tape measures and rolls of tape out of his truck box and the whole mural is now a construction site.  I quickly came to realize that Dave is a finish carpenter and exquisite furniture craftsman with an engineer brain and a perfectionist attitude who works harder than I do and makes excellent coffee.  He was immediately hired.

I don’t want to bore you with the whole list of miraculous gifts that have come along during the process, (like the little lady bug landing on the wall on the very spot I was about to make the first brush stroke of the mural…) just trust me – every day was a new perfect moment, everything I needed showed up, right down to two rainy days off when I was so exhausted I really needed to just stop and sleep.  That’s the magic.  The right people, the right ideas, the right support, the right answers…

Fast forward to today.  We are finally working on all the finish elements that make the mural come alive.   I was making a list of all the details: painting door knobs on the buildings, painting people around the bandstand, detailing the blacksmith shop, vines around the fence posts… and wishing I had 10 more weeks to spend on just the detail work) when out of the blue up rolls a little red Subaru, and out pops one of Boulder County’s most talented mural artists, Roxanna DesJardain.  I have seen her work all over the county and have admired her artistic style for a decade, but somehow we had never met.  She said that our mutual friend, Spencer Turner, had suggested that she stop by and say hello.  The next thing I know there is a brush in her hand and vines are springing up across the mural, antique doorknobs are appearing on the historic buildings and she mentions that she has a design idea for the bike that I wanted to paint in front of the antique store.  She was immediately hired.

From there, many more artists have joined us, and the end result is a beautiful collaboration of art and love and magic.

But here is my latest favorite bit of Magic du jour…  Dave -  who by now is still resisting letting me call him an artist, but is doing beautiful detailed shading and contour work on the Blacksmith Shop -  is sketching a quick design for a forge that he wants to paint into the back of the shop.  He and I are debating what the forge would look like, when up walks our buddy and neighbor, Phil.  Phil has been meandering by the mural every week or so to check on the progress.  He is an artist himself, has a gallery and tattoo studio in Boulder, and somehow both Dave and I failed to notice until today when Phil heard our discussion and rolled up his shirt sleeve, that one of  major tattoo elements on his arm is of his Grandfather, a blacksmith, wielding a hammer over a brick forge.  Tattooed.  Right there!!  On his arm!!  Seriously!!   Phil was immediately hired.  Well, not so much “hired” as accosted, and Dave and I shamelessly heisted the image of the brick forge tattoo design and painted it into the mural.

Seriously, this is how the whole mural has unfolded.   I couldn’t make this stuff up…

I am constantly in awe of the amazing gifts and lessons and people who have been a part of this incredible experience.

And now I am inviting you to be a part of it, too.

We are finishing up the mural and throwing it a party!

Our Mural Dedication Party will be Friday, November 4th, 6pm, at the Niwot First Friday Art Walk.

Which, magically, just happens to be my father’s birthday.  He would have loved this!

Please plan to join us and be part of the celebration of this magical experience.

After all, you are the reason we wanted to create this mural in the first place – to welcome you to our sweet town and show you that we are a magical place!

David Bowes - non-artist

Roxanna's Bike

]]> http://www.magicbrushpets.com/blog/2011/10/08/and-thats-why-i-call-it-magic-brush/feed/ 5 http://www.magicbrushpets.com/blog/2011/08/30/how-to-train-your-mural/ http://www.magicbrushpets.com/blog/2011/08/30/how-to-train-your-mural/#comments Tue, 30 Aug 2011 04:18:44 +0000 admin http://www.magicbrushpets.com/blog/?p=177

Steam engine coming out of a tunnel

Hello my sweet friends, and lovers of art, and lovers of wild artists!

Whew, I know I keep saying it but yikes!!!  It’s hot out there!  I started this mural on the first day of our 18 day 90+ degree run, and now we are having another late-August record-breaker heat wave. The ambient air temp coming off the gravel was 116 when I left the mural today.   But, there is definitely a shift in the weather.  It is dark in the mornings now and I have to start later, closer to 6am than 5am (yeah…no, I am not complaining, I love having to stay all snuggled and asleep in my yummy bed for an extra hour).  Now it is cool in the mornings, 60ish, so I am wearing a fleece and drinking my coffee hot instead of iced, and today is the first day I wore pants that go all the way to the ground.  Other than that, it’s business as usual out there on the mural wall.

Things are starting to move fast now.  We are over half way done.  Everything is blocked in, most of the details on the upper half of the mural are done, I plan to say good-bye to the scissor lift and just use ladders and decks to complete all of the foreground details. This week it’s all about the trains. (Get it?  “Training your mural”? Hee hee!)  The caboose entering a tunnel on the east side of the building is finished, and I am working on the steam engine emerging from the tunnel on the far west end of the mural.  The challenge now isn’t just corrugations, it’s also two double slide windows of the offices of our friends at Excel Electrical, which just happen to fall right smack in the middle of the tunnel and train.  So I am just painting right over the glass…it’s amazing what these people are letting me get away with.  The master plan is to paint the glass, then photograph the window area and have it converted to that graphic film that you see wrapping buses and cars with ads – the film covers the windows, but from the inside you don’t see the image, but you can see out just like a regular window.  I have no idea how this works, but I believe in it like I firmly believe in Santa and World Peace and True Love and all the benevolent, possibly-imaginary things that make my little world happy.

I’ll let you know how that all works out for me…

You may have noticed that the mural is conveniently located parallel to – and about 20 yards from – train tracks.  Niwot officially began as a train stop for farmers to load their sugar beets onto the train to be delivered to the sugar mill in Longmont.  (Unofficially, Niwot was home to a tribe of Arapaho Indians who, of course, didn’t actually come from India so why are they called Indians anyway, something to do with lost sailors and the alleged West Indies, which apparently  is not a Seattle film/music genre,  and there is no way out of this non-politically-correct spiral, except to say that it was theirs and they got kind of sick of us moving in and taking up all the space, and I’m not actually saying, officially or unofficially, that we are all descendants of settlers with somewhat questionable boundaries, but I am saying that the tribe left and now we live in this valley and it’s full of Starbucks instead of Buffalo, but you can get Buffalo Burgers at the Niwot Tavern and really good coffee at several delightful venues in town… I don’t really know what all that means . . .   but sometimes I wonder… where are we going and what are we doing in this hand basket?).

So here we are, technically, historically a train town and every day while I am painting, several randomly-scheduled freight trains roll by.  The engineers are piecing together that we are not just vandals out there wreaking havoc on random building walls in the blazing heat and/or early semi-darkness, under grasshopper attack (what’s up with all the mural-loving grasshoppers this summer??!!), but we are actual artists creating something resembling art, and they are beginning to warm up to the whole show.  Now they wave and smile as they roll by, and on several occasions the track maintenance guys who drive the rails in adapted pickup trucks actually stop and check it out and offer us water and encouragement.  It’s like having a very loud rolling fan club.

The Flowers To The People Fundraiser is going great!!  The Flower painting is scheduled for the week of September 12-17.  If you have already signed up and made your donation of $25 or more (thankyouthankyouthankyou!!) then you are receiving email updates from me and you know when to come out and paint.  If you haven’t signed up yet, please get your name on the list, I don’t want you to miss out on this fantastic, history-making opportunity.  You can come see me at the mural at 2^nd Ave and the Diagonal Hwy Mon-Fri 6am-1pm-ish or go to Wise Buys Antiques at 190 2^nd Ave in Old Town Niwot and sign up.

As always, thanks again for your love and support and horn honks and waves and hugs and donuts and observations of my mental health (that girl’s crazy!!).  You are the reason I get to do what I love to do, and I love you for it!

caboose - blocking in shape and color

Caboose with shading and detail

me, training my mural.

I am interrupting your regularly scheduled mural update because I’m hungry.

I have been writing about all of the visual arts going on around here in Niwot, but I haven’t told you about the culinary arts that are rocking this town right now (except for pie, which I have shared extensively, but technically, I believe pie falls in the ‘spiritual enlightenment’ category…)

Right now the Niwot per capita ratio of epic deliciousness to eaters is about 7:1.  I don’t really know what that means, I am prone to making up random statistics 73% of the time, but my point is this:  we have some amazing restaurants in Niwot.  We have not one, not two, but three places for spectacular pizza, we have four dining establishments with outdoor garden seating (Colterra garden seating is just that, you dine IN their vegetable garden…), we have Mexican, Chinese, Italian, a Breakfast Café and a Tavern, this town in so into food that one of the best restaurants around isn’t even it restaurant, it’s our local grocery store – Niwot Market!  (which, by the way, is home to three incredible murals by our local artist Cy Hundley.  That’s right, we even have murals in our grocery store!!!)   So I promise to write more about the exceptional restaurant scene here in this tiny town of five square blocks of yumminess, but today I want to tell you about a non-restaurant culinary adventure that happens only in Niwot.

It’s our local, annual Lobster Bash.  (spoiler alert:  I’d like to take this moment to acknowledge that yes; lobsters are assassinated in this story.  While I have an extensive history of vegetarianism, and marriage related vegetarianism, and nephew related vegetarianism, and I respect and adore vegetarians wherever they may roam, I do, however, occasionally dive into the deep end of the pool of cruel gluttony and warm up some butter and have at it…I hate myself a little bit…but then I add lemon to the melted  butter and get over it… but for anyone who is offended by the eating of innocent lobsters, you can click here and be redirected to www.mainlobsterrescue.org and make a donation to help educate people like me about the weight of my actions, and possibly the weight of my caboose if I keep eating all of this melted butter…).

Anyhooo, once a year in this little hamlet we gather together, close off 2^nd Avenue, (just around the corner from the Epic Niwot Mural that I am supposed to be writing about, so there, that’s your update…),  we hire up a band or two, line the streets with brightly clothed tables and chairs, and serve up a lobster party!!!

Here’s how it works:  For $35 you get a fresh cooked lobster flown in from Maine that day, some roasted fresh- from-the-farm-up-the-street sweet corn, and a table and a chair.  After that, it’s all up to you.  You can bring whatever side dishes, desserts, beverages, decorations, party attire, bubbles, pink flamingos, candelabras, beach balls,  bendy straws and party hats you can come up with.  This year I decided to bring my all-time favorite accessories:  Amy, Molly, Sue, Nants, Kim, Terry and Terry’s adorable little visiting niece, Giorgia – fresh in from Torino, Italy.  We were partying on an international level.  These girlfriends are professionals at this sort of gig.  We were all dressed in fabulous tropical attire, and brought in wonderful side dishes of hummus and fresh veggies, chunky guacamole and black bean chips, Asian cabbage slaw, mango salsa, the sweetest cantalope on the planet wrapped in prosciutto, bottles of every flavor of wine, and tiramisu cake for dessert. 

There was acoustic guitar music for dining by the very fun and gifted Craig Corona.  He is an old friend from my days in the restaurant biz, and a wonderful musical artist (that’s right – a whole other level of artistry going on in Niwot – we also happen to be a music mecca.  But that’s another blog for another day.  Soon, I promise).  After Craig’s melodic dinner tunes, we launched into a couple of hours of Rebecca Folsom Band for dancing into the night.  There was a beautiful sunset, 349 dining companions, perfect weather, just another incredible day of food and fun and friends and art and love and melted butter in beautiful Niwot, Colorado.

I realize I am kind of a jerk for telling you about this now, instead of two weeks ago so you could all show up with your lobster bibs, but I’m telling you now…so plan ahead for next year!  I promise it will be worth the wait!!

For more info on the Lobster Bash, and the schedule of  random frivolity going on here in Niwot, check out www.niwot.com.  And uber thanks to Diane Atwood of Elysian Fields here in town, and her posse of volunteer lobster wranglers for making this event such a huge, fun, buttery success!  Diane doesn’t know it yet, but one of the details in the epic mural will be her sweet dearly departed dog Ellie, who is famous around these parts for her adorableness.  So there’s another bonus mural update!

Cheers!

Our imported Italian cupcake!

Hey, has anyone seen a big giant mural around here some where?

My favorite party accessories, the greatest friends a lobster assassin could ever hope to find. I know what you are thinking and sadly, no, there was no prize for the tackiest party outfit...

Still life with Blueberry Mini Pie and Scissor Lift.  (and yes, that is black caboose paint on my hands…)

Then I said “sure, I can paint a mural

on a corrugated wall, no problem!”

  Howdy!  It was another hot week on the mural wall, but I am super motivated because things are starting to take shape.  It seemed like a long time getting the prep and primer coats done, plotting out points for positioning of major “landmarks”, and laying in the backgrounds of the mountains, rolling foothills and foreground.  But now things are getting exciting – the Dodd Farm Barn is finished, as is the split rail fence in the foreground, the tipi village (including the pie-smell!), the Niwot flag is waving above Haystack mountain, Left hand creek is flowing through the hillside and I have re-designed the lower portion of the creek to come into a small waterfall, and I will be painting the Rubber Duck in the creek, since the duck race benefit fundraiser is such a significant event for our annual Niwot Nostalgia Days.  I love to include new, personalized ideas as the mural evolves.  I have the original design sketch and the mural will be very much based on that, but clever, small details keep coming up that make the design so fun, and even more special and unique to our sweet town.

My project for this week is the caboose.  It’s huge!!  It is a depiction of the Niwot historic Caboose (you can climb on the real thing at our Whistle Stop Park on Murray and First Street) entering a tunnel on the east side of the building, and then there is a steam engine emerging from the tunnel on the far right side of the mural, next to the left-handed prairie dog.  This 20’ tall caboose is an extra challenge because it involves a lot of horizontal lines and the corrugation makes it impossible to paint a straight line with anything other than a small, pointed, soft bristle art brush.  I do not heart corrugation.

But I do heart you!!  Thank you for reading this journal, for coming out and saying howdy, for honking when you drive by on Hwy 119, for asking if it’s hot enough out for me (umm, yes.  yes it is…), and  for supporting local art and artists.  You are the reason I am painting this mural, and you are the reason I get to do what I love to do.  So thanks for being you.  xoxoxo

x

Day five of the epic Niwot mural extravaganza and I’m still loving it!!

 In fact, even though I have scheduled eight weeks (and possibly longer) to complete this crazy-huge project, today, only 5 days into the process, I had a moment of lamenting there are only seven more weeks to go.  I don’t want it to end.  But in my barely-practicing semi-Buddhist way, I decided to turn that momentary sense of loss into unbridled appreciation for this time and this experience, and all of the gifts and challenges that come with it.  Today’s gift and challenge dujour is my 4-wheel drive diesel powered 25′ scissor lift.  It let me down.  And not in the good way… 

So I called my dear friend Joni Jones over at Sunbelt rental who promptly sent over Dan who plugged in a tester thingy and immediately confirmed that yes, indeed, this machine is not functioning properly and the fact that I have been stranded up high, and then lowered and jerked and tossed about is not typical scissor lift behavior.  So this one is out and a new one is on its way.  In the same barely-practicing, semi-Buddhist way, I promise to be even more grateful for the new scissor lift than I was for this piece of (pardon my french…) “unreliable equipment” (please feel free to insert your own satisfying expletive). 

In order to avoid the searing heat of the day, I have been getting started with painting around 6am every morning,  and even though that is ridiculously early for a night owl artist, I have discovered that it is cool and quiet and so beautiful.  To my surprise, it turns out that 6am isn’t actually the middle of the night, there is daylight, and all of the monsters and scary things that roam the streets at night have all gone home.

And I usually have the wall to myself that early in the morning.  Not that I don’t adore my friends and neighbors and Niwot residents who come by throughout the day to say hello and check on the progress and ask if I need anything (seriously, they do that, even people I have never met…how sweet is that??  I love Niwot!!!)   But I do savor that quiet time by myself to plan the day’s design and process.  Oh, did I mention that  even though I have a full design sketch of the composition, and even though I have painted hundreds of murals, that I am completely making this up as I go along?  It’s true.  I have never (no one has ever) painted a 160′ corrugated metal wall next to the train tracks in 90+ degree heat while navigating an angry scissor lift!  So I am figuring it all out as I go, and it’s nice to have some quiet time in the morning, alone, to work things out in my head.   This morning, however, as I was setting up my supplies and getting ready to board the scissor lift of death, an older model pick-up truck that I didn’t recognize pulled around the corner of the building and drove slowly toward me.  The driver reminded me of my father, an octegenarian at one with his truck.  He had his window rolled down and was studying the mural as he slowly drove the length of the wall.  When he got up to where I was standing, he looked at me, gave me a nod and said, with all sincerity, “So what is that?  Art?”

So there you go.  That’s what I have carried in my heart all day.  He was so genuine and sincere, and just wanted to know what was going on.  It humbled me and made me smile, it made me appreciate these wonderful people and connections, and reminded me that I am the luckiest barely-practicing semi-Buddhist in the whole wide world.

How hot?  Well the thermometer said 93 degrees, but the heat coming off the mural wall felt closer to 425 degrees (tater-tot-hot)… give or take…

The point I am trying to make is – it’s hot and I don’t even care because I am so happy to be painting this mural!!  So first thing this morning (about 7am) I climbed up on the rental 25 foot 4 wheel drive scissor lift (my new favorite toy), jacked it up to the 22 foot mark and prepared to make the first official brush stroke of the epic Niwot Mural, and there, right on the spot I was going to paint, was a little red lady bug!  I took it as a wonderful omen, and took a picture of her.  And she lived up to my expectations because it was a great day painting!  Even though the temperature was hot, a thunderstorm rolled through this afternoon and shaded me and the wall all afternoon before it finally started raining and I had to pack it up.  Normally the sun will be hitting the wall by about 2pm but I was painting today until after 7pm.  I am planning to start painting around 6am and avoid the heat of the day… but I lady-bug-lucked out today and got in about 11 hours.  It was hard to put the brush down and walk away, but I have to save some strength for tomorrow, and the next 60 or so tomorrows after that…

I had been feeling challenged about creating a mural on a wall of 160 feet of corrugated metal.  So today I tried to work a few different techniques to work with the corrugation, around the 4″ seams, across the bolts.  Finally I just decided to treat these uneven, annoying ripples the same way I treat cellulite or the phone bill, and just ignore it altogether.

I made a new friend today – Quentin Young, the Arts Writer for the Longmont Times Call.  He came out to see what all the fuss is about with this crazy mural, and he is going to write about Niwot’s latest art adventure.  Yay!

Now I am ready for some sweet dreams before my next day of muralisciousness.  I hope my littlest lady bug friend has sweet dreams too.

                                                                                                                        pixies@magicbrusharts.com

Niwot Artist to Paint Historical Downtown Mural

Design sketches will be unveiled at the First Friday Art Walk, July 1 from 5-8pm at Wise Buys Antiques, 190 Second Avenue, Niwot.

Niwot, CO – The Town of Niwot has a rich history dating back to the mid-eighteen hundreds, and Niwot resident and local artist Denise Chamberlain, owner of Magic Brush Arts, has been hired to paint us a picture. A mural, to be precise, depicting the spirit and heritage of the town. Design sketches will be presented to the public at the First Friday Art Walk in Niwot this Friday, July 1, 5-8pm at Wise Buys Antiques, 190 Second Avenue in the heart of Old Town. Attendees of this free event will enjoy music, food, wine, art, and a sneak peak of Niwot’s mural.

The mural will be created over the next 8 weeks and cover a 160′x25′ stretch of wall on the west side of Niwot’s Excel Electric Company building (a small Niwot-based company, not to be confused with Xcel Energy.)  The project is being funded by Local Improvement District tax funds and private donations. 

Chamberlain, a resident of Boulder County since 1978, has created dozens of commercial and residential murals locally, including Boulder’s Dot’s Diner and Back Country Pizza and Tap House. “There is so much going on in Niwot; it’s Boulder County’s best-kept secret!” exclaims Chamberlain. “I’m excited to bring the past, present and future of Niwot to life in the mural, which will feature The Grange, Reverend Taylor’s Grocery Store, the bank that was robbed in the ‘20s, the bandstand, and a left-handed prairie dog.” (Niwot, the namesake of Arapaho leader Chief Niwot, means left hand.)

Chamberlain’s work has been featured in Boulder County Home & Garden and Architecture & Design of the West Magazines. Using artist-quality yet environmentally friendly paints, stains and sealers, she creates one-of-a-kind furniture, pet accessories, murals and faux finished spaces, including distressed cabinetry in Niwot’s Goldbranch Estates.

The Niwot Mural Committee is currently accepting donations, and a community-involvement fundraiser is being planned so residents can pick up a paintbrush and contribute their own indelible print to Niwot’s history. For more information about the mural and other Niwot festivities, including the Rhythm on the Rails music festival, LobsterFest and First Fridays, contact info@niwot.com. For more information about Magic Brush Arts, contact Denise Chamberlain at 720-352-2506, or visit her online studio at www.magicbrusharts.com.

##

I heart sunbeams

Hello Friends,

My friend Garrett Hacking of Photography G is a renowned photographer of Rock and Roll bands and has some of the most stunning Red Rocks concert photos ever captured.  But before you get all excited and run off to his website to see pics of Widespread and Neil Young and Springsteen, I have a little gift for you.  Garrett and I were talking recently about the difference between amateur and professional pet photographs, and he pointed out that most people make the same mistakes, and with just a few simple, top-secret moves, anyone can capture great photographs of their pets.  One of the biggest snags is trying to photograph a black pet.  Inevitably they come out dark and blob-like.  Well here is a tip from our friend Garrett to help us take gorgeous pics of our hard to photograph critters:

A Shot in the Dark:  How to photograph those black dogs!

One of the questions I am asked as professional Colorado photographer is: “How do I get my black pet to show up on camera?” This is a great question.

There are a few things you can do. First, turn off your flash. Then get that black beauty in a shady area. Whatever your camera, point and shoot or SLR, find the setting that lets YOU control the flash. A lightning bolt typically indicates it. The setting with that bolt and a circle and a line through it should disable the flash. Choose that. If your camera doesn’t allow for that (likely on the most basic point and shoots), just cover the flash with your finger being sure to hold the camera as steady as possible (or use a tripod, though you will lose some of your availability to be spontaneous).

Placing your pet in a shady area with a nice background will allow natural light to do its thing and bring to your photo what you see with your eye. If your pet still looks closer to a black blob than you like, the next step is to overexpose your photograph. This will only be possible with  more sophisticated point and shoot cameras, and SLRs.

To do this, you will need to use an exposure compensation button, if available, or switch your camera out of the automatic mode to manual, aperture priority or shutter priority. Once you have done this, dial you exposure “up” – meaning to the plus side so you are letting in more light (and effectively lightening that pet of yours). Play with it until you see the results that please you most.

Have fun. Explore your camera and explore the world around you with your camera!

Good Luck!

Garrett

Garrett Hacking – Photography G

Colorado Portrait Photographer

Who's a pretty boy?!

Thank you Garrett!  ( Oh, by the way, if you are like me and understand about 64% of that professional photographer “SLR dial plus side up exposure compensation aperature priority” gobbledy goop and want to know more, or want to just hand the responsibility over to a pro, make an appointment with our friend Garrett Hacking, and be guaranteed that beautiful shot of your best friend, or better yet, you AND your best friend!  Oh yeah, if you also happen to be the best ‘Guitar Hero’ hero on your block, don’t forget to have Garrett capture that magical experience, too).

You are going to love having a great photo of your beloved pet.   Incidentally, I put a picture of me next to Butter’s food dish just so she remembers who actually works to fund that non-stop buffet for her.  If you try Garrett’s tips and like the results, send us your pics and we’ll post them here on the Pet’s Blog!

And thanks for reading,  and for sharing our blog with your pet lovin’ friends and family,

We love you already.

xoxo

Denise and Butter