gwjones photography

So, COVID is still with us, as I believe we all figured it would be even with vaccines, experimental as they my be. Many thinga have changed or me and for all of us in so very many ways. I find myself working much less and staying at home more. My habits were certainly changed with the lockdowns of 2020. Finding purpose is much more difficult for me these days which I find preplexing based on the fact that my life pre-COVID seemed jam packed with purpose. I have not been out to the wetlands in over a year to ingage in photography. For most of 2020 they were closed and perhaps that contributed to the loss of purpose. I'm really not sure. Getting back on track I'm finding to be difficult. My family dynamic has changed, as well contributing to my stay close to  home habit. Ansel Adams was crediting with saying that after a point he didn't need to go out into the field anymore since his archive was so full that he could spend all his time printing negatives never seen. Well, I have taken that to heart considering my current situation and I am processing images from my archive that few if any people have seen. I've also been printing, matting and framing images for a client that has kept me busy. I've even hung them in her home as part of my service. I have found this exercise to actually be very fulfilling. It has allowed me to view much of my work in a different light seperated by the distance of time since I first shot the image. Taking all things together life is good and progressing not as I might desire, but as God wishes it too. I press forward with optimissum chasing inspiration as I am lead. Each day and each tought and each touch of love is a gift and I am gratful beyond ability to express. To say that I am blessed is an understatement. Grab life and play the catds you have been dealt the very best you can and look up because the promise is just that...a promise. 

I have another book in mind if I can possibly pony up the money for self publishing. Other than that I continue onward trying to increase my sense of creative seeing. 

I wish each of you the best in these trying times. Blessings to all!

Window Light 

East to the Sun

Katilynn

In the year of COVID so many aspects of our lives have changed. Adversity seems to surround us. We have lived our lives differently than at any other time in the last 60 years. Born during the Korean conflict, my generation has been through Vietnam, and other conflicts. We've experienced 911 and the Gulf conflicts. Now we are seeing unrest and adversity in many of our largest cities that we never could have imagined. Hate and distrust seem to be everywhere. We're wearing masks and keep our distance from one another. In many families touching and intimacy have all but stopped in fear of transmission of infection. Gathering together to celebrate is greatly curtailed if not completely forbidden. This is true with art, as well. In-person gallery shows and art festivals have been canceled. We have turned to online virtual shows. An experience, although safe, as the transmission of COVID is concerned, robs the viewer of the experience of seeing up close the wonder of the artist's work. Regardless, we as artists must push on and continuing creating looking forward to the day when views can gather in person once again to experience the wonder of painted images, sculpture, photographs, and hand-turned pottery. To create is our mission and our duty.

Recently I found myself in a creative slump and I wondered just where my inspiration had gone. THe dictionary defines inspiration as the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

Thats how we all come to that inspiration is in life. During my art school years I came to think of sinspiration as smokey muse that lays always just at the periphery of my vision. An elusive mist that leads me on and on often never really materializing into what I expect it to be. Often I sit and complain that a creative slump has me uninspired. It's in those times that I have learned that inorder be creative, inorder to find my way I must put eye to viewfinder and begin the process regardless. With each push of the shutter the chase to find  the muse of inspiration takes a step forward. I guess that inorder to be creative an artist must each day be busy in the persuit of it all. In to be inspired to create on must struggle with the task pushing ever forward, ever forward. I believe that Pablo Picasso said it best when he said: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." In a nutsshell that really is the answer, the way to create. To be busy with the struggle of art is the very spark of inspiration. I have found it a hard lesson. One that requires me to do when I just really don't want to fight forward. Scripture says that we must push on towards the mark of the high calling of God. Art is just that a high calling. To create is to indeed be about the fathers work. I see photograpy as that spark that opens my eye to the very soul of the world that surronds me. I must see things as they really are and not as we've been told they appear. to dig deep to the vey esseence is the struggle of inspiration. To see in a new way and I guess nolonger look the that glass darkley. I have always loved to see things photographed and in that hopefully show not jsut what they are but  to show also what else they are. To share those hidden things, to make an object nolonger ordinary is the passion, the inspiration. I desire to always be working so that inspiration can always find me, espcially when I'm lost in the high weeds of life.

I leave you with the words of the Great Muhammad Ali who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee: "The man who has no imagination has no wings." 

Find life in all that you do. Seek the deep things and never settle for the mundane or the ordinary. Life is too short and fragile to live without experiencing the very esscene of it.

From Studio317 I send you belssings for an extraordinary life full of creative moments and overflowing with inspiration. Now get busy!

-gary

 Tuesday 3 July 2018

While going through some very old

boxes with files dating back to when I was Assitant Art Director for Norgren-Davis Advertising in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Deep in this box of old memories was an envelope with 35mm color and black & white negatives that I had taken at Port Canaveral for a brochure project. Right there with them were some negatives I took during one of my frequent photography nights at the port. Being that during that time I lived in Cape Canaveral only a mile or so from the port late at night, I would roam along the channel with my Nikon and a 50mm lens looking for interesting subjects. I found the work of the night crews of great interest. The old negatives were from a night when I photographed men working as they loaded natural gas into a barge bound for parts unknown. I took a roll or more that night but only two survived over the years. I digitized them and went to work to correct the damage from 30+ years of poor storage in the heat of several garages. I have titled them Night Work 1 & 2 and posted them in black & white, as well as black & white with a color tint treatment.

This discovery has begun to germinate ideas for a new project consisting of photographs of industrial work at night. I'll let you know where this leads as I think it out.

Hope you enjoy the color tint versions I have posted here. Please check out the Night Work folder to see the black & white versions.

Be sure to look for me on Facebook at http://facebook.com/gary.w.jones1 and gwjones . photographic imaging

My best to all

-gwjones

Night Work 1

Night Work 2

Preparation continues...

For the past year I have preparring to self publish my first photographic book. It has proven to be a much more difficult work than I had anticipated it would be. 

The working, and most likely the sctual, title is: Portrits from the Swamp. It is an up close look into the character and spirit of the creatures that I have had the blessing to photograph over the last 4 to 5 years. 

My approach has been to try and photograph my wild subjects in a manner and style much like I would do for human subjects.

The work of gathering the images has been slow, which is good, but the seeking of funds to pay for thr printing has been most trying at times. I had hoped to go to press in 2016, but here I am quickly approaching the end of 2017 with many miles left to travel on this project.

I do hope to be able to post here, in the not too distance future, that the book is in hand and ready for sale.

Wish me luck.

Below are a few images that will be included in the printing.

Blessings to all...

Spent a bit of time in the marshes and along the edge of West Lake Toho. The stormy season is upon us here in Florida and everyday we are experienceing strong thunder storms. Wednesday was
no exception. Coming back from the store I noticed a strom forming to the soithwest of the house. The sky was darking and white to light grey roll clouds were leading the way as the storm moved on to the northeast. Ran into the house and grabed the camera with my 24-70 f/2.8 lens, jumoed back in the car and headed south to the tip of West Lake Toho. Arrived just in time to capture some wonderful cloud formations as the storm moved over the lake. The lighting was pretty intense and I must admitt that I was spoked more than once as I shot away. Posted here is one of the images looking southwest across the lake. I hope you enjoy.

Inaddition I'm including two images of snadhill cranes taken in the marsh of East Lake Toho in St. Cloud. I am blessed to live where ther is an abundance of birds and other wildlife. In fact it is one of the great benefits of living in Florida.

The sandhill cranes have so much expression in their eyes and the way they move. I just never get enough of seeing and photographing them.

It is my hope that all three of these images touch your spirit.

-gwjones
Stormy Wednesday - West Lake Toho

Mom Sandhill Crane sitting her nest in the high grass of the East Lake marsh.

Adolescent Sandhill Crane in the marsh of Est Lake Toho

Hope all is well. The summer is upon us here in Florida. Hot and humid days with strong afternoon thunder storms. The swamps and wetlands are beginning to fill back up with water and slowly the many birds and other wildlife are returning.

Haven't been out much lately to shoot. My schedule has been pretty full with the video production work and with family. I now have a new grandson. That makes for three girls and one boy. All of them are great blessings. Life is good and the creative spirit is strong.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and reading lately on the subjects of spirit as it relates to creativity. It is and has always been a goal of mine that my photography would reveal the spirit of the subjects that present themselves to me. This desire to reveal depth of character is always my firat thought as I begin a project or a single image series. Not sure if I'm really succesful, but I try hard to share with you what I experience when I'm persuing my art.

Let me leave you with the words of just one of the many phhotographs that I admire and who inspire me.

The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate. - Sebastiao Salgado

Take care my friends and may your life be adundant with blessings

Silent Predator

Recently received some great news that my photograph: Silent Preddator is a first place winner in the 2017 International Photography Compeitition, sponsored by the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in Tampa, Florida.

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Back around March, at the encouragment of a fellow artist, I submitted an image to the 2017 International Photography Compitetion under the category: Science, Nature & Animals.

For the 2017 compitetion, the FMoPA partnered with Creative Loafing, a weekly entertainment magazine, to celebrate the work of photographers from all over the world. The exhibition features 22 winning submissions. There were 955 entries in 7 catetgories, submitted by 413 unique participants, from 4 continents.

I was fortunate to be selected as one of the seven first place winners. The work will be on exhibit in the Community Gallery of the FMoPA from 23 June to 18 August.