So drop me a line if you’re interested, and we’ll get snapping!!

• Location: 1750 Water Street (L5 Media and Miramichi Online)
• Call: 210-0765
• Price: $129 +HST

Course topics:

• camera operations and basics
• no more blurry pictures
• exposure control
• creative composition
• basic editing

Any camera model will do.  You’ll be surprised at how feature rich even the simplest camera is.

These photos are of my cousin’s daughter, the same girl featured in a recent post about creativity. She stopped into my studio during the March Break and we did a shoot. I like taking pictures of people that tell something about them – I’m sure painting wil always be a part of Virginia’s life, so that’s the reason for the brush in a few of the shots.

Some of the shots were also taken with a HOLGA. I really enjoy this simple medium, and try to off all my clients a variety of shots and poses, as well as a few done the old fashioned way.

www. TedLynch.com

The latest person I would like to bring attention to is Jackie Deil.  Jackie is an artist, but it’s her belief that art is an important part or a child’s development that is the reason I chose to introduce her to everyone.  Her daughter Virginia has amazing talent, and wait until you see what Jackie’s kindergarten students are creating. .

Read Jackie’s own account below.  Thanks, Jackie!

A Childhood Filled With Opportunities for Art

I look at the over-stimuli of this day and age and I can’t help but to feel concern for the challenge this generation will face in discovering it’s creative side.My concern is that children are so overly anesthetized and full of the light of their screens that half of them may not even know who they are and what they are capable of doing or being outside the amount of like buttons on their facebook status.

Putting aside our many parenting blunders I feel confident to say that we provided our 4girls a childhood filled with opportunities for art and opportunities to find out who theyare as a creative being. We have an open art policy in this house. I put a paintbrush inVirginia’s hand as soon as she could hold one and encouraged her to use it.

I’d like to think that is one of the reasons that Virginia continually returns to who she knows she is;  The girl who can capture emotion and light with a piece of paper and a pencil. We both know that we are just happier, nicer people when we remain active with our art, so I take delight in seeing her enter the place of art. I tear up to hear her say, “I was born to go into art, I can’t really see myself doing anything else with my life.”

I myself  have fond memories that surround my earliest interests in art and the people who played a key role in spurring me on to explore my abilities as a child. Relaying their stories is the best way I can explain how vital our role is as adults to promote it. As a child I was blessed to be surrounded by people who were promoters of art. People who saw it in me before I did, encouraged it in me with words, took pride in my efforts,spent time teaching me outside of being paid for it, provided the materials, provided the space it takes and allowed the mess it takes to make art happen.

We just put together an art studio in our home and I was delighted to have our youngest daughter Melissa, age 8 keep me company with her attempts at shading an apple while Iworked on an acrylic of Peggy’s cove.  She lit up when I gave her some shading tips; it was a light bulb moment for her and a full circle moment for me as I shared the story of my own discovery of shading. That at her age I had a grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Whitty from St. Michaels, who gave me my first shading tips. She saw it in me before I did, loved me and encouraged me to enter an art contest, providing the materials to do it. I still have the 2nd prize ribbon.

Mr. Nason was the art teacher that roamed the school hallways on the Miramichi…hemesmerized us all by working simple lines and colors into these amazing masterpieces which we’d try to re-create. He made me want to work hard at it and go the extra mile.  The kind of teacher you were eager to please and tried to emulate.
Mrs. Fogan was an amazing artist who lived in Newcastle. She patiently gave my brother Marc and me free oil painting lessons. If only she knew what a foundation I feel she laid for me. I can still feel her warm hand over mine at her kitchen table.

I remember spilling my paint water and staining the new rug in my bedroom. I expected severe chastisement from my Mom who said little. I confess to lacking my Mother’s patience when it comes to the mess, but ultimately my kids know they are free to create in this house…and we’ll gripe about the mess later.

There wasn’t a whole lot of money to provide art materials but Dad always came up with something for us to paint on.  Scraps of paper discarded from the mill, smooth board, or apiece of faux leather. Dad bragged about us to everyone who came in the door. He took my artwork to the mill where at age 10, I was hired to draw safety posters.

I had teachers who just loved, supported and took pride in me. In grade 5, Mrs. Gill readthe newspaper article about my job at the mill to the class. I knew that she was proud ofmy claim to fame as the youngest commercial artist on the Miramichi. She allowed me to work on my posters in class provided my schoolwork was completed.  In grade 6, Miss McLaughlin displayed my tabby cat painting on her bookshelf.  Almost30 years later, I ran into her at Grandfather’s funeral; with tears in her eyes, she tells me she still has that painting and displayed it each year in her class.

I do believe art inspires art. Virginia is blessed with a family of artistic genes and inspiration on both sides, both artistically and musically. I find we feed off each other.  I’d like to think that as a family we are like sharks in a feeding frenzy. The more we see the doing of art the more it happens.   To be certain we have a different forte, style and techniques and we’ll even have heated arguments about the death of a paint brush (dare I mention our paintbrush graveyard?) but when I walk in to see her at work at the easel my heart quickens and I want to paint. I’d like to think it’s the same on her end.

For 3 years I have run a preschool in my home and if you ask me how I promote art in my class I would tell you that I do 2 things. Firstly, I DO art. Each year I get the same reaction when I show the kids my latest project;  a resounding, “Can I do it?”  How can I say no to that? All of them are eager to explore their potential whether they have an artistic bone or not.

Secondly, I provide the proper tools and a bit of patient instruction. I cannot possiblyshow them my work and then leave them to paint on their Little Tikes easel with their chubby toddler paintbrushes, knowing what the real tools will accomplish for them. They never fail to rise to the occasion when they hold Mrs. Deil’s paintbrush in their hand. Perhaps it’s vain to think that they work meticulously because they want to emulate me just as I did Mr. Nason. Whatever the case, the results are stunning. For a moment, they shine as rock stars and they know it!

I confess to spending many years ignoring my artistic passion, perhaps too busy with the doing of  life. But no matter how long I run from my truest self, the voices of my earliest supporters remain. I do believe our childhood beliefs about our self are our truest to who God intended we be. Simply because children lack the cynicism life teaches us. Like Virginia, I believed as a child that one day I would be a great artist. I know that these people played a key role in developing that belief and in carrying me through my times of disbelief. I’d like to think I’ve followed suit in paying it forward.

If someone in your household has reached that important milestone of graduating from high school or college, it’s time to start thinking about graduation portraits.  I am offering a package that is exceptional value, and the pictures are, well, just a whole lot better than anyone else’s.

Package: $170 (no prints, just CD, $110)

• 1 hour sitting (no limit on poses, looks or people)
• Online Proof Gallery
• 4 retouched and resized images
• CD with retouched photos, full-resolution, no watermarks
• (2) 8×10, (4) 5×7, (8) 4×6, 100 wallets

Your session can also include photos with family and friends, so bring them along, too.

*By comparison, Life Touch wants $250 for the same number of prints, but I believe the student council get a kickback that helps fund graduation services or something.

Your prints and/or CD will be ready in a few days after you select your favourites.  The selection of photos will be larger, the quality better, and the price cheaper.  And you’ll be supporting a local business.

The Holgas have a shutter speed of 1/110th of a second, and two apertures (sunny and cloudy) of f7 – f9 (I tested them in the studio).  Thy also have a BULB setting, and a hot shoe.  They require a few feet of black electrical tape around the outsides to make them light tight when using them.

The last 5 photos were taken with a Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model.  The Brownie Hawkeye has a slower shutter speed of approx. 1/40th of a second, and a fixed aperture of f16, and a minimum focusing distance of about 7 feet.  It is fun to use, but you need a steady hand.  I have yet to try the other cameras, but one day soon I will add some photos for them, too.

Honouring Nick Dolan in photos

I am also fortunate that to have people come to me with their old photos when they want to do something special to honour  friends and family.  Several times a month I create memorial DVDs for funeral services and sometimes birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings and graduations.  This week I created a DVD for the family of Nick Dolan, who recently passed away.  The family couldn’t decide  which photos should go in the DVD, and asked me to help.  I was immediately struck by the “completeness” of the collection of photos that I given.  This family was very lucky to have someone who cared enough to consistently, over many decades, capture their family history in photos. I couldn’t decide what photos to use either, so I used them all.

The Best Reason To Take Pictures

My father died recently, and I don’t have a picture of me and him, except when I was an infant.  We have lots of great pictures of Dad doing the things he loved, with the people he loved.  The pictures are in albums and boxes, and now we have digital copies we share with each other.  I wish I had more pictures of him.  I wish I had a video of him so I could hear his voice, hear him laugh, watch him cut wood or collect eggs.  If I could do it over again, I would do these things.

This why we take pictures (and video).  Go out today and take a picture of someone you love.  Get in the picture, too,  and give them a hug.   Print it, and put it in a shoe box somewhere.  Post it online to share with others.  Keep it.  You won’t regret it.

Also, I will be having a FREE photography camp during the March break for 6 students over the age of 12.  These camps will begin again in the summer – what a great way for kids to get out of the house and be creative.

Feel free to drop in and see our new location, and ask some questions about our services.