Well, I have more exciting news to report. Not only have my images been awarded 9 Honorable Mentions in the International Photography Awards, but my Dal Lake series has actually taken FIRST PLACE in the Travel category!! Honorable Mentions were wonderful news in themselves, but first place is incredible! Once again, THANK YOU to all the judges for this amazing recognition!
I’ve just received news that I’ve been awarded NINE, yes nine, Honorable Mentions in this year’s International Photography Awards. This contest is one of the most prestigious, and the winning images are always of the highest caliber, so having my work mentioned among them is indeed an honor. The panel of judges included representatives from National Geographic, Photo District News, Magnum, and many more. So a tremendous thank you to all of the judges!!
You can see all of my images here, along with my statements about them, and the full list of other winning images. Until then, here’s an overview…
The three overall contest winners will be announced at this year’s Lucie Awards in October. Congratulations to the Finalists, and good luck to you all!
August 24, 2010 - 2:45 pm
Erin - !! Congratulations, Nicole. Wow. Clearly the folks at IPA know what they're talking about... :)
August 24, 2010 - 3:20 pm
Tim - Fantastic photographs! I don't know you, but they are very impressive!
August 25, 2010 - 3:43 am
mario - Congrats! Keep up the good work!
August 27, 2010 - 1:58 pm
Bethany - Congratulations! And I feel so honored to have one of the honorable mentions hanging on my wall. You are truly talented.
August 27, 2010 - 2:43 pm
nicoleg - Thanks everyone!! And thanks for chiming in, Tim!
August 27, 2010 - 11:09 pm
Brenda - Congrats Nicole!!! You have such a wonderful talent!!
The long-awaited day has finally arrived… the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers site is now live!
If you haven’t done so already, click here to head on over and browse around for a while. Also, a huge thanks to all the amazing people who are making this group and website possible. This has been no small task!
August 16, 2010 - 3:56 pm
Erin - Congratulations, Nicole! The site is beautiful. All your hard work has really paid off!
August 17, 2010 - 4:51 pm
peter berg - yep nice one, looks really good, and content is great. well done!
pb
I’ve just returned from an incredible time in Santa Fe, where I spent a week learning new skills, spending time with outstanding people, and doing things I never thought I’d do. I’ve been learning a unique photographic process that I have come to absolutely love, and I’m thankful to my teachers and fellow students for a once-in-a-lifetime experience together.
A great deal of time and work goes into each image (essentially making film from scratch), so there are only a few, but I’d like to share some with you here:
We also had the opportunity to spend a day on location at a place called Eave’s Movie Ranch, a full-on Old West film set that you might recognize from some of your favorite Westerns…
This is Thomas, who generously let us run around his place all day…
…and his ferocious dog, Jesse James.
Thanks to all for a fantastic time!
August 2, 2010 - 5:56 pm
Erin - Those first images are stunning, Nicole. Glass plate, or a different technique?
Glad to see you had a great time :)
August 2, 2010 - 5:57 pm
Jon McCormack - wow. stunning. love the 3rd image.
The Movie Ranch reminds me of Bodie. Nice shots.
August 2, 2010 - 7:48 pm
Ben J - I really like those "made from scratch" photos. Quite a creative turn out. Were you using the 8x10 view camera to expose that film?
Many of us love to travel long distances to see the amazing things of the world and yet rarely take the same time to appreciate what’s right around us, and well, I’m no different. But Arizona has more than its fair share of mind-blowing landscapes and natural wonders, so last week I took a trip to take some of them in. Having lived in the desert for most of my life, I don’t usually appreciate the landscape as much as someone seeing the for the first time, but I do have to say that the Southwest holds some gems that were stunning even to me.
When most people think of canyons around here, the Grand Canyon is usually what comes to mind. And if you know me or have read this blog you know that I’ve had my encounters with the Grand Canyon. But slot canyons are a different experience entirely. Narrow slots carved deep into the rock by flash floods and flowing rainwater, they boast a beauty all their own.
As promised, here are some images from the trip. I don’t know what else to say other than yes, it really is this gorgeous.
June 26, 2010 - 3:12 pm
Dave C - This is amazing! Where's this at and how do I get there??
June 28, 2010 - 3:41 pm
peter berg - yep brilliant nicole, love it.
June 29, 2010 - 2:01 pm
nicoleg - Thanks guys! Dave, it's way up near Lake Powell. Definitely worth the drive though.
July 1, 2010 - 3:56 am
mario - I especially like the close ups, Nicole. There's ambiguity in them. And even more so in the BW images. AZ is beautiful. I miss it :)
Over the weekend, a friend and I set out on a two-day road trip to visit some of Northern Arizona’s natural wonders. We needed some time away from the city, so we headed out to see one of the slot canyons near the Utah border. We knew we would be in for stunning landscapes and awe-inspiring sights…. What we didn’t know was what we would encounter on our way home.
As we drove north on Saturday, we passed a forest fire just outside Flagstaff. Though it was the closest either of us had actually been to a wildfire, this is not an uncommon sight in Arizona, so I snapped some photos and we continued on our way.
As we drove home the next day, we came to see that over the course of 24 hours, a second fire had started and grown into a blazing monstrosity. And yes, it was directly in our path. As the highway took us straight toward the fire, we witnessed the power of nature in a way we were definitely not expecting…
This is the only major highway heading where we needed to go, so we drove as far as we could. The highway was closed, of course, though.
So… now what to do?
After conferencing with some fellow stranded drivers to find another way home, we ended up taking a very unpaved road about 20 miles or so to a different highway and arrived home only a couple hours later than we planned.
While I sit at home, though, the fire continues to rage. It has now been named the Schultz fire and, as of today, has burned roughly 10,000 acres of forest. You can find more information about the situation at BBC or CNN here and here.
Besides the fire, the rest of the weekend was stunning as I expected. Those photos to come in the next post.
There’s a central theme in my mind that drives much of my more artsy work: the unseen.
I started an abstract project a few months ago based on this concept, and this is part two of that project. This is probably going to be something that I continue to develop, but I thought I’d bring you along on the journey in the meantime.
Here, I photograph the physical world, but in a way that prompts viewers to ask questions about what they’re looking at and what there is beyond the small frame of what they can see. In these images, I photograph the body, focusing the work on humanity…. The rest is for your own reflection…
I don’t know what the general response to these will be. Maybe they’re not really your cup of tea, or maybe they move you somehow. It’s actually okay either way. To be honest, I really have no idea if they’re “good” or not.
But there’s this temptation in photography to do what we know will be accepted. To recreate images that we’ve seen before and that we can be fairly confident that people will like. I’m familiar with the struggle – I fight it all the time. I can do the expected and the safe, but that’s not really enough for me. I’m bored with images that everyone’s done before and seen before. I want to create work that’s deeper and more meaningful to me. But that, my friends, is risky. These images may work, or they may not. Some people might not care for them at all – others may love them. But either way, they’re the product of going beyond what I know and doing something more personal, and that’s something I think is always worthwhile.
June 12, 2010 - 2:25 pm
Teresa - Great! Don't loose that track.....and how did you get those fabulous body images....it could also be .....up to me....Universe images!!
June 14, 2010 - 4:47 pm
Erin - Beautiful work, Nicole. That negative space is powerful.
Over the long weekend, I spent several days at the family “ranch.” Things are different every time I go there, so I’ve decided to do a series of 360 degree panoramas on the progress of the place. It will be a long-term thing, of course, but I added a couple images to the archive this weekend.
One at early sunrise and one a little later in the morning…
June 5, 2010 - 6:16 am
Jon McCormack - Very nice - love the second image.
June 5, 2010 - 7:47 pm
Carissa - i love this series!
June 10, 2010 - 11:58 am
Teresa - Just lovely! ....different hours.....different images.....but the beauty remains.
June 10, 2010 - 12:23 pm
nicoleg - Thanks everybody!
Okay, I’ve been talking about it for months. Visual peacemaking, that is. And now… big news. The International Guild of Visual Peacemakers is launching our official website! While the last-minute bugs are still being worked out, I’ve gotten a sneak peak at the site and have been having fun poking around. And I gotta say… it’s going to be fantastic. The site is full of photos and stories from world-class photographers, resources and opportunities for photographers of all kinds, podcasts, interviews, and way more goodies than I can even talk about. It’s going to be a great place for people to connect, share their work, learn, and enjoy the work of others. Whether you’re a photographer or not, you’re going to want to check this out. More to come when we launch. Until then, I’ll leave you with a couple teasers…
And now for the second of my two Preemptive Love photo shoots from last week. This time: the Nature set.
And um… yes, that’s me in the photos. What can I say? I’ve been doing these shoots for Preemptive Love, and the light outside on this particular day was so incredible that I HAD to photograph. Except, I didn’t have any models and the light was about to change, so I put on a Preemptive Love t-shirt and went out to experiment. I wanted to try a different style, and I’m actually really happy with how my experimenting turned out.
Maybe it’s not cool to be in your own photos, and maybe you think I’m kinda crazy. Well… oh well. It’s okay because this light is GORGEOUS!
And by the way, I went back out to try something else only a couple days later, and the sun was in a different position in the sky – even at the same hour. The same shots were never possible again.
April 26, 2010 - 9:48 am
Justin Keitch - Hey Nicole,
I think it's totally cool, way to seize the moment. The light is gorgeous and the shots are amazing.
Justin
April 26, 2010 - 11:29 am
Jon McCormack - Nice - the first image is really good. The backlight, the flare, the softness all come together into a very fine photograph. Very well done.
April 26, 2010 - 4:30 pm
Carissa - you make a beautiful model and photos!
May 1, 2010 - 3:26 pm
Erin - Beautiful images, Nicole. Recognizing the fabulous light and going for it... yeah!
May 25, 2010 - 1:39 am
Matt Brandon - Wow, I didn't know you were a model as well as a photographer! Well done. PL will love these.
by nicoleg
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