Weston Photography Newsletter - May - August 2010

Greetings,

The spring and summer months have just been zipping by us here at Wildcat Hill. Zach is home for the summer and as some of you know he is a California State Lifeguard, while he was working at Tower 1 at Monterey State Beach last month, he had his first save! We are so proud of him. It was in the local paper and it seemed as if the whole county was proud of him! It's a welcome change from all of the "bad news" we have on a daily basis. Zach took it as just another day, after all it is his job!

It’s been a while since my last newsletter, and I want to thank all of the new subscribers!

Newly Added
We have added a new workshop on August 27-29, 2010 A Studio Nude workshop with Kim Weston and Christa Meola, for more info
Weston Photography Workshops

Word Press
I am also in the hunt for an experienced Word Press designer/programmer. If you know any great people out there send them my way!

Print of the Month
The Print of the Month Portfolio is coming along very nicely. Most of the images are going into their 2nd tier of pricing. Make sure to take a look to see if any of your favorites are in it!
www.kimweston.com/pom/pom.htm

Workshops
We have been super busy with several workshops and a couple of exhibitions! In April we had our traditional Wildcat Studio Nude Workshop with 3 top notch models. Kat Love came all the way from Greece to be with us! Larva came up from LA and Katharine from the south bay area. The weekend was filled with inspiration, excitement and talent! I can honestly say it was one of the best nude workshops we have hosted yet. They just keep getter better and better!

Also in April, we had our very first California Mission Workshop. Martin Vargas Garcia and Ruben Mendoza introduced us to the ins and outs of the California Mission San Juan Bautista. We received permission to photograph in the restricted areas where the public is not allowed. One of the goals of the workshop was to self publish a book on the mission. We are almost done with it and it will be available through Blurb books very soon. Check out some of the images from the workshop on our blog. http://kimweston.blogspot.com/

Weston Scholarship
May brought our 7th Annual Weston Scholarship Portfolio Contest and Exhibition at the Marjorie Evans Gallery at the Sunset Center in Carmel Ca. Please visit our scholarship site to view photographs of this year's winners and see how much fun we had at the Award Ceremony and opening. This year a total of 91 portfolios were submitted and we awarded 25 Scholarships!

Since 2004 Weston Scholarship has awarded 88 scholarships to the photography students of the Monterey County, totaling over $37,000.00. In the past funds for the scholarships were raised via a Fine Print Auction and by private donations.

Fundraiser
The Weston Scholarship "Student Fine Print Program" is one of our fundraiser's this year. Three scholarship winners were mentored by Kim in his darkroom where they made 15 images of one of their winning photographs. Buy a beautiful 8x10 silver gelatin photograph by one of our outstanding up and coming scholarship winners. Donation: $125 per photograph.

Photographer Roman Loranc has generously donated one of his beautiful photographs to our Scholarship "Beginnings" an 11x14 toned black and white photograph. A new scholarship will be created in his name will be awarded beginning next year. See the scholarship website and go to the news page for all of the exciting details! www.westonscholarship.org/news

Also in May Kim's Show
In May we had the opening of Kim's one man show "New Work" at the Exposed Gallery in Carmel Ca. Kim featured his 16x20 black and white nudes. We had a great turnout! I will post the opening pictures on the blog soon but for those of you that are on Face book you can see the pictures on my FB page.

More Workshops
Brian Pawlowski came down to teach Platinum Printing and beyond; using digital negatives. Even though the enrollment was low we kept the class and had a great 2 day workshop. Thanks to Brian for all of his hard work and to Ken for keeping him in line.

In June we hosted 3 workshops! One was a joint venture with Al Webber and David Vestal. Thanks to Al's loyal followers we had an amazing turnout of 21 participants. We traveled up and down the coast taking pictures, sharing work and spending time with a wonderful group of photographers. We want to thank Al for including us in his workshop this year!!!!

Mark Comon from Paul's Photo brought up 2 groups of students for thier annual Weston Studio Nude. The first group was made up of mostly beginning nude photographers; many had never photographed the nude before. But they came well prepared under Mark's careful tutelage. It was great, inspirational and fun! We made many new friends!
His second group the veterans, have been coming up for the past 5 years! Wow how time flies! This group was very focused and they concentrated on getting images they had been thinking about since their last visit! Thank you Mark for bringing your group and your fabulous energy to Wildcat Hill!

Models
Kim and I would like to thank all of the models that have worked with us this year. You are amazing talented women. Thank you very much!

Guest Photographers
We would like to thank Huntington Witherill and Tracy Morrison for sharing Hunter's work and Tracy's desserts will all of our guests, Jim Kasson, Chuck Davis and Robert Shaffer for also bringing their work to share with our workshops. It always make it so fun and interesting to see what other artists are up to.

I will be posting most of my images from Events and Workshops on my blog. So please sign up if you would like to follow along.

I am sure there is more, isn't there always? I guess it's my own fault for not writing a newsletter since April.

Hope you are having a wonderful summer,
Take care and keep in touch.
Gina, Kim and Zach