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Maine Photographer Update

By admin | Published: January 26, 2012

There seem to be a lot of shows going on right now for Maine photographers, so I thought I’d highlight a few. First, this weekend a few shows close down (I’m going to go see these two in Portland on Saturday myself) so if you are interested, move quickly – these shows include the Bruce Brown-curated shows at the Addison Wooley Gallery and at the Lewis Gallery at the Portland Public Library.

Congratulations to Mainers ( and Nickelson Editions clients) Felice Boucher, Sarah Szwajkos, and Robert Moran (with a slick new website!) for being accepted into the Poetic Objects show at the Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery.

The Singular show I talked about way back when is moving to the Pace Galleries of Art on the campus of Fryeburg Academy in Fryeburg, Maine, with an opening reception this Saturday. It is a very interesting show and definitely worthwhile – I haven’t seen that gallery yet myself but have heard it is gorgeous.

Congratulations to NE client Terry Hire for being a participating artist in the upcoming “Blue” show at Aarhus Gallery in Belfast, Maine, which runs from February 2nd through the 26th with an opening reception Friday February 3rd, 5-8pm.

Posted in Client Shows | Leave a comment

Printing Tips – Humidity in your printing environment

By admin | Published: January 26, 2012

Sometimes we take for granted modern inkjet printers because of their competence and reliability. Modern printers, though, are incredibly complex machines, particularly with respect to the printheads. Each printer and its printheads is designed for a particular range of environmental conditions, including temperature and humidity. For most home printing situations, humidity is most likely to be the issue as temperature ranges in most houses stay within a relatively tight range. Epson printers (which is what I use) have a recommended humidity range of 40% – 60% for optimal operation.

So, does this really matter in the real world? Generally speaking, yes. My personal experience, and that of many others, is that operating one of these printers outside this range (particularly at lower humidity) can result in much more frequent clogs and, as a result, wastage of ink from nozzle cleanings and wastage of both ink and paper from ruined prints. (to read the full article, please go here).

Posted in The Paper Chase (Printing Blog) | Leave a comment

Wolf Moon

By admin | Published: January 25, 2012

January’s full moon was the Wolf Moon and I’m very pleased with my photographs from this latest full moon. Weather conditions were not good for the actual moonrise, and life conditions were not particularly good either as I was also watching my 5-year old daughter, but the end result was worthwhile. (Even if Eliza had to stay up past her bedtime a bit.). Below you’ll find four images from that shoot. As always, please let me know what you think (and in particular if you also see a wolf amongst those clouds!). You can find all of my full moon photographs that are part of my Adventures in Celestial Mechanics series here.

Various and Sundry, Year of the Dragon Edition

By admin | Published: January 23, 2012

"Dragon", Copyright Jim Nickelson

First off, Happy Chinese New Year to all as we enter the Year of the Dragon. Sadly I did not have a photograph of a real dragon to provide from my archives, but I’ll use this shot from my Stolen Ninety-Nine project as a placeholder until real dragons become a bit less mythical.

I have quite a few random things to talk about this week. First off, congrats to Nickelson Editions client Brendan Bullock for making the cover (as the photographer, not the subject, that is) of the latest issue of Maine magazine that appeared on my doorstep today.

Congratulations also to NE client Jane Yudelman (as well as fellow Mainer C.E. Morse) for being accepted to the Snow & Ice exhibition at the 1650 Gallery in decidedly non-icy and snowy Los Angeles (see link for all accepted images and here for Jane’s, one of my favorites).

The Maine Photo Alliance has just published its January 2012 Online Exhibition, this one entitled “Odd Shots” and curated by Susan Davens. This is an interesting one as all participating photographers had to submit shots that do not fit in with the rest of their work, and Susan has done a great job of pulling together what I imagined were pretty disparate entries.

If you are interested in utilizing social media to market your photography (grudgingly or not), you’ll find Photoshelter’s new (and free!) guides to the subject very useful. I just read the updated guides and they are pretty good. You can find all of their free guides here.

I have a number of other blog posts in the queue for this week, so stay tuned…

Posted in Client Shows, In the News | Leave a comment

Arla, Circles, Squares, & Lightroom 4

By admin | Published: January 10, 2012

Congratulations to Arla Patch, as her work is featured in the current print edition of B&W + Color Magazine. The article includes five images and is based on her newest body of work entitled “b. 1950″, featuring projection of images (in this case, watercolors) upon her own body. You can see (and purchase) all of the images in this body of work here.

In big news this morning, Adobe released the free beta version of the newest Lightroom product. You can read about and download LR 4 here and a more detailed explanation of the new features is here. I definitely recommend this free 22-minute video showing the new features if you are a current LR user – Michael Reichmann is definitely an expert on LR and has a practical and lucid approach to these matters.

So what are the big improvements? For me the biggest improvement is soft proofing for print – this is finally implemented, and in what appears to be a very intelligent fashion, making LR now an even more viable alternative for printing exhibition-quality prints. Other big improvements are separate curves for each RGB channel, a revised tone mapping system (blacks, whites, contrast, etc.), integration with Google Maps f0r GPS-enabled cameras, integration with Blurb for making books, and significantly improved ability to handle video. I believe the full version will be available in March or so.

So should you try this out? If you’ve never tried LR this is a great opportunity to sample the program for free. If you are a current user, it is definitely worthwhile to play around with it and see what kinds of differences there are, or to use it for special applications that require some of the new capability. I do not recommend, however, using the program for any production work unless you are very careful. I personally will not use it for ‘final’ processing of any of my images until the final program is released. Besides the possibility of errors in the code, there is also the possibility that any changes, settings, or processing you make in the beta will not carry over to the final project.

Lastly, circles and squares. There were two interesting posts on The Online Photographer in the last few days that I thought I’d mention. First, a discussion of the possibility of square sensors. I wish! There are decided technical advantages to doing so, but I’d say it is still unlikely in any mainstream product. What we will hopefully see even more of, though, is at least square crops available in-camera – I find it a decided advantage to be able to compose in the square and I miss that capability in my Nikons. There was a follow-up post on the even more unlikely possibility of a circular sensor, but a nice discussion by Michael Johnston on alternative frame shapes throughout the history of photography.

Posted in Client Shows, In the News, Technical Tips, The Square | Comments closed

Long Nights Moon & New Edition Sizes

By admin | Published: January 9, 2012

First up is a new image from December that you may have seen in my 2011 Favorites, Long Nights Moon. December’s full moon has many names but my favorite (and the one most appropriate for this photograph) is Long Nights Moon. I really don’t know how this image will look on everybody’s monitor as dark images such as this one are particularly susceptible to monitor variations, but the print really sings. The print also is an incredibly tough one to print – one of toughest I’ve ever done – because when you are printing in the shadows everything must be perfect for the print to feel right. I’m still fine-tuning the print as I live with the image on my walls right now. Next up in my Adventures in Celestial Mechanics series is tonight’s full moon, the Wolf Moon – I’m pretty optimistic with the images I took in the last 24 hours for this one. More on this soon…

In other news, I’ve tweaked things a bit on the business end for 2012. Most importantly, I’ve reduced my edition sizes significantly for any new editions (i.e., new photographs and editions that have not yet had any sales). My new edition sizes are 10 16″x16″ prints, 8 24″x24″ prints, and 5 36″x36″ (along with a sub-8″ open editions). The prices have also changed accordingly for the 16″ and 24″ sizes.

Posted in New Work, The Business of Photography, The Dark Night (Night Photography) | Comments closed

Favorites of 2011

By admin | Published: January 6, 2012

Yes, here is my obligatory 2011 favorites list! I actually do love making this sort of list as it gives me a chance to reflect on a longer timeframe. These images range from January until December so I suppose that indicates some consistency throughout the year. All of the images are from Maine, which certainly says something about my travel schedule in 2011.

While I did not make it out photographing as frequently as I would have liked (who does?), 2011 was a very good year for me photographically. I started new bodies of work about which I’m very excited, started and completed my Stolen 99 project photographing the environment at Peopleplace, had the solo show at Harvard, and was in a wide range of group shows, including at the Univ. of Maine Museum of Art. Here’s hoping for an even better 2012 for everyone!

Without further ado, here are my favorite ten images of 2011 along with a bit of commentary. Like any such list, it is purely subjective, so please let me know what you think and if you have any particular favorites. Thanks for looking!

First up is one of my ice studies from last January, captured along the Megunticook River. I love this series and this image rises to the top for me for its (I hesitate to say the word) painterly quality.

Next up is a more recent photograph from November that was taken on Megunticook Lake on a misty, cool morning. My affinity for this image is certainly in the calm composition and the lovely color.

A new series I started this year is my “Nightfall” series. These two photographs from summer 2011 are my clear favorites from that group. With this series I’m trying to provide a fresh perspective on iconic landscapes, and you can’t get much more iconic than Acadia’s Otter Cliffs and the Bubbles.

…and now for something completely different. Another new series I started this year is my “Pyrotechnic” series – abstracted images of fireworks reminiscent of the forms of nature. You can find my black & white ones here and my color ones here, but as of right now this is my favorite.

Another new series this year is my “Adventures in Celestial Mechanics” series. This series will be a multi-year project because of the vagaries of weather, clouds, and life, but I’m ecstatic with how its begun. Three images from this series make my favorites of the year (one is hot off the press, too, taken in December).

This photograph, taken in Acadia from the top of Cadillac, is one of my personal lessons of persistence. I’ve been trying for years to make a photograph like this from roughly the same location but in 2011 the combination of light, weather, and my skills finally resulted in what I consider a successful image.

Last but not least is one of my Waterscapes series…I went back and forth on this selection and could have gone with many others, too, but on this day this is my favorite of that group:

Posted in New Work | Comments closed

New show in Vermont and update on the Carmel Show

By admin | Published: January 5, 2012

I was pleased to hear that two of my images were selected for the upcoming show at Vermont’s PhotoPlace Gallery entitled The Four Seasons. Barrett’s Cove, Dusk was selected for the physical gallery and Barrett’s Cove for the online gallery. You can check out the full gallery of selected works here. And I was equally pleased to hear that Jane Yudelman’s image was also selected for the physical gallery – I’ve included the image to the right. Congrats, Jane! The show runs from Feb 14th until March 10th.

Oh, and I should mention that my piece is currently in transit for the Center for Photographic Art show in Carmel, but in the meantime they’ve put up a gallery of selected images. Definitely worth a look as there is some really strong work in there. They have a MagCloud catalog which I’ll check out as well – I’ve never ordered anything from MagCloud so I’m curious about the quality.

Posted in Client Shows, See My Work | Comments closed

Megunticook Morning

By admin | Published: January 4, 2012

I’ve just posted a new image to the website, Megunticook Morning (see below). This photograph was created in late fall at nearby Megunticook Lake and is another of my recent favorites. You can see other photographs from Megunticook Lake here. Let me know what you think, as always!

Posted in New Work | Comments closed

A new Waterscape, a new show, and a year-long exposure

By admin | Published: January 3, 2012

Greetings to all and Happy New Year! I’ve been going through my 2011 images and I’ve just added one recent recent abstract Waterscape to my gallery. This one (above) was taken just after sunrise and also captures the reflected setting full moon. Let me know what you think! You can see my entire abstract Waterscape portfolio here. I’ll have my obligatory top-10 images of 2011 post coming in the next few days.

Congratulations to Heather Frederick of VoxPhotographs and the four photographers who just joined her gallery, Jeffrey Becton, Felice Boucher, Audra Welton, and Jane Yudelman! I’ve printed for Felice, Audra, and Jane and each has some exquisite work.

There is another show curated by Bruce Brown opening this Friday – this one at the Lewis Gallery at the Portland Public Library (and hosted by the CMCA) – this one and is entitled “Around the House: 17 Maine Photographers”, and includes photographers such as Sarah Szwajkos, Thomas Birtwistle, Jon Edwards, & Cig Harvey. The show opens this Friday, January 6th, and runs until January 28th.

And last but not least, Canadian photographer Michael Chrisman just completed on New Year’s Day a very impressive image – a one-year long exposure using a pinhole camera of the Toronto skyline. I definitely recommend checking out the image and the article here.

Posted in Client Shows, In the News, New Work | Comments closed

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Posts to this blog may contain images and excerpts for the use of which I have not sought prior authorization. I will always provide credit to authors, artists and copyright holders whenever possible. All material is made available for the purpose of analysis and critique and to advance the understanding of the arts. The ‘fair use’ of such material is provided for under U.S. Copyright Law and all material is viewable for educational and intellectual purposes.

Jim Nickelson's Musings on All Things Photographic - the blog home of Jim Nickelson Photography and Nickelson Editions Fine Art Digital Printmaking

Maine Photographer Update

Printing Tips – Humidity in your printing environment

Wolf Moon

Various and Sundry, Year of the Dragon Edition

Arla, Circles, Squares, & Lightroom 4

Long Nights Moon & New Edition Sizes

Favorites of 2011

New show in Vermont and update on the Carmel Show

Megunticook Morning

A new Waterscape, a new show, and a year-long exposure

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