Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Family Portraits

Last Saturday I had a family photo session at the Nelson-Atkins Museum and these are some of my favorites. They liked the more traditional shots best but I managed to get a few that were a little more creative. It was SO hot & humid I thought I was going to pass out while shooting but we made it & they didn't look like they had a drop of sweat on them, whereas I looked terrible. Good thing I'm behind the camera! They were a really nice family and so gorgeous & pulled-together it made my job a little easier. :o) Grace, the one daughter who found me online & hired me to get the family portrait for her mom said that they all really enjoyed the session & that her mom had a lot of fun.




Can't decide on this one below if I like it better in color or b&w:





Monday, June 11, 2007

Not so fast!

Well, my winning glory lasted about 5 hours before Miss America was stripped of her crown.... Or, you might say, before Al Gore had the presidency stolen from him by those darn electoral votes.

That was me Friday afternoon just after 4 PM when I got a call from the other co-chair of the Art @ Work exhibit telling me that she'd gotten a call from someone in HR who told her that the votes had been calculated wrong. And, to re-do it & "fix it". Which meant that after a re-tally that I hadn't won 1st place after all and she had to send out another email correcting the winning art works. Sucks to be me. The one who had gotten 2nd originally was now 1st. And the 2 that had tied for 3rd before weren't in the top 3 at all. There was another completely different winner for 3rd.

"How could this be?" you ask? Well, the voting, not the tallying, wasn't done right from the start. It was supposed to be by category. But someone in HR (same person that called for the re-count, like it was a darn presidential election) didn't think that everyone in the firm would understand how to vote for their favorite photograph, their favorite 3D piece & their favorite painting. Duh! Just dumb it down for everyone, why don't we. Go against the rules because you think we're all mentally retarded. It's only a firm full of people with law degrees, for Pete's sake! So, before the show as we're setting up, I ask "Aren't we hanging & displaying things by category?" when I noticed things were just being hung randomly & all mixed up. This person says to me, "No, it's a better idea to just vote for the top 3." "Out of the whole show? What happened to the categories?" I ask, trying to figure out what the change she's talking about making will really mean for the whole show. "Well, we don't have enough for each category."

Well, that shouldn't make any difference. So what if we only had 1 or 2 for a couple of the categories. Good for them! Less competition! We're still supposed to have one from each go to Union Station. Should it really be their fault if nobody else in the firm entered something in their category??

And, it's just even more unfair that only 1 of those top three would go to Union Station (because suddenly people could vote for 3 photos & nothing else if they wanted to), rather than one from each category like how it was supposed to be. And in even further unfairness, each of those 3 votes were weighted, rather than just being 3 plain votes. The 1st vote counted more than the 3rd. Thus, when the winning person received 20 votes for #1, and I received 16 votes for #2, it wasn't that I received 4 less votes. I'm actually not sure how far behind I was in #1 votes. who knows? But I was the one who had the most #2 votes. If this makes any sense. I still had most votes overall with 43. 43 people wrote down my number, #11, on one of those 3 lines on their ballots. I was still 9 ahead in overall votes. 43 people still liked my work well enough to put the number down. Versus only 34 people overall voting for the "#1" winner at some point on their ballots. The weight of the votes is screwy. If it had just been done by category everything would be fine & fair. And, the #1 winner was still a photograph. Someone said to me (though still thinking the whole thing stinks), well, if it was by category then it doesn't mean that you would have won in that category still. But, that's not the point. At least it would have been fair for everyone & I would have been okay with that. I wouldn't have gone through half the day thinking & believing I'd won! My feelings wouldn't have been hurt. I'm a big girl. I didn't even expect to win to begin with! I wouldn't have been a "sore loser" if it had been done right from the beginning & I'd lost still. So, that's not the point at all. I feel bad for the person who did the mosaic plate. They would have, and should have, gone to Union Station because they were the favorite in the 3D category. They won more votes than any of the other entrants in that category, and originally, got 3rd place even out of votes overall. It's just not fair for anyone else either & I feel equally as bad for them.

But, even thought it's a big deal for us artists, it's not a big enough deal for the rest of the firm to do anything about it & make it right or stick with the original vote count, so we just have to let it go. And I'll just try to get in a real gallery on my own. Where things are admitted based on their artistic value or because the artist is talented, not by office politics and Human Resources sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, deciding for everyone what our mental capacity for voting is. The Art @ Work really was a great concept, but unfortunately our firm is incapable of pulling something like this off without making it more complex than it should be. They turned a really fun thing into a big mess.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Wait. I need to prepare my speech...

You can now call this an Award Winning photograph:



The votes were tallied this morning from the Art @ Work exhibit held here at work yesterday afternoon and I won the best in show People's Choice award for First Place! I had even been griping the other day because they changed the way the voting would be done. Since we didn't have enough entries for each of the 6 categories to vote for best in each, they just had everyone vote for their top 3 favorites in the whole show. So, photographs were pitted against fiber art, sculpture and paintings. We had 34 entries total for the firm. And I feel even more surprised and proud that I beat out all the other entries...and there were some really great things! I had convinced myself last night that I didn't stand a chance and that a painting would win for sure because that's all anyone seemed to be making great comments about. I heard maybe a few (I was a co-chair of the event so heard everyone as they came & went for the duration of the exhibit) comments about my 3 entries, so I was just preparing myself to not win so I wouldn't be disappointed. But after all that, I ended up winning, which I feel even better about winning because it wasn't voted by category, but rather overall favorites.

My photograph above, titled "Live Oak Sprawl" received 43 votes. 2nd place was also a photo and got 34 votes. And there was a tie for 3rd place, each with 24 votes; one was another photograph and the other was a glass mosaic plate. No paintings won at all which really surprised me. Someone also took a picture of me by my tree photo yesterday at the end of the show so I'll get a copy of that from HR & post it here also.

So, in August my work will go to the Art @ Work exhibit at Union Station for judging by a panel of well-known artists and members of the art community here in Kansas City. A lot of other corporations and firms here in KC participated also so I'll be anxious to see all their People's Choice winners too when that time comes. The first place winners at the Union Station exhibit will go on to be in a booth at the Plaza Arts fair in September. Wahoo! :o)

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