For those of you who may come and visit my blog here often - I'm MOVING!
Yes - same blog news - with different look and feel as part of my whole new website.
Mark it here: http://StacyN.com http://stacyn.com
I just wanted to shake things up a bit and try a different blogging service. I've been teaching myself some CSS and working on blogs for other clients, so I thought I'd practice with one of my own. Let me know what you think!
Need a holiday gift? Want to help children with life-threatening illnesses just by shopping? On Tuesday, November 11, I will be part of a holiday art show at Spectrum Butterworth Hospital.
Sponsored by the Junior Golden Rule Guild - 15 percent of the sales will go directly to support to the Pediatric Department at DeVos Children's Hospital. Each pediatric patient entering the hospital received a hand puppet made by members of the Guild, founded in 1947. The guild members also buy equipment for the playrooms and volunteer in the Café as well as the Hematology-Oncology Pediatric Clinic. They schedule Discovery Toy sales and a Christmas Bazaar for hospital employees and guests.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PHOTOGRAPHY AVAILABLE
More than 85 amateur and professional photographers entered over 220 photos in the 2008 photo contest sponsored by Budweiser and the Chicago-based Great Lakes Forever. Budweiser will use one amateur and one professional photograph on educational beer coasters to be distributed throughout eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces. Judging is now down to the final round—and of the three professional photograph nominees, two are of the Grand Haven lighthouse. And both were taken by Grand Rapids-area photographers who became friends through entering juried competitions. Rockford resident Stacy A. Niedzwiecki took a tranquil photo of the Grand Haven lighthouse on a June evening. “I was waiting for a sunset that fizzled out but decided to try a longer exposure, she says. Steve Huyser-Honig shot a dramatic view of the Grand Haven lighthouse during a November gale.
Now it’s up to you. Go to http://www.greatlakesforever.com/html/
news/photocontestvote.php to vote for your favorite amateur and professional photo. Voting ends on 12:59 am EST on Saturday, August 30, 2008 (11:59 p.m. CST on Friday, August 29). The winning photo in each category will be printed on the 2008 Great Lakes Forever/Budweiser beer coasters, along with fun facts on how you can protect the Great Lakes from pollution, groundwater depletion and invasive species. The coasters will be distributed to bars and restaurants throughout the Great Lakes region.
“This is a fun and friendly coincidence for us. We’ll both be pleased if either one of us wins,” Huyser-Honig said. He and Niedzwiecki became friends in early 2007, when their photos hung side by side in a juried competition. Since then they’ve alerted each other to photo opportunities from artist residencies to outdoor art shows. Both just learned their work will hang for a year in the Governor’s Residence in Lansing—including Huyser-Honig’s “November Gale” piece.
Niedzwiecki, a graphic designer who owns Niedzwiecki Creative Solutions, sells her work online, in local gift shops and at local art shows. Spectrum Health’s new Lemmen-Holton Cancer Pavilion features 48 of her photographs.
Steve Huyser-Honig owns Great Lakes Editions and has photographs in the permanent collections of St. Mary’s Health Care Center, Muskegon Community Foundation, Calvin College, and Holland Community Hospital. He sells his work online and at art shows in Michigan and Chicago.
Great Lakes Forever, a program of Biodiversity Project, is a public education program meant to help our region’s residents enjoy and protect this “wonderful yet vulnerable” natural resource. “The Great Lakes are an incredible resource, not only economically, but also in terms of biodiversity, culture and personal identity,” said Jennifer Browning, executive director of the Biodiversity Project. “We sometimes forget that despite their tremendous size, what we do in our daily lives can impact the future of the Great Lakes for generations to come.”
“Great Lakes residents are proud of their beautiful and valuable lakes,” said Bob Fishbeck, Budweiser product manager. ”The awareness this program brings sparks consumer interests about the Great Lakes and directs them to the Great Lakes Forever Web site where they can learn more about the Biodiversity Project and how they can get involved.”
CONTACTS FOR PHOTOGRAPHY OR MORE INFORMATION
This year, I'm offering my desk-sized 2009 Michigan Moments Calendar a full month early!
These handy tabletop calendars are 8.27" x 3.74" and perfect for that little spot in your office or home. These make great holiday gifts as well for friends and family! The desk-sized calendars are $6.95 each, plus shipping (unless you'd like to pick them up from me free of charge). Michigan residents please add 6% sales tax to your total purchase.
Hey - with all the excitement of the Olympics - I want to get in on the action too!
I just received my booth assignment for Rockford Art in the Park - please stop by and see me at booth #11 along the banks of the Rogue River on Saturday, September 6th from 9 - 5 pm.
My photo of the Saginaw River Lighthouse is featured in the Michigan in Pictures photo blog. Check it out!
http://michpics.wordpress.com
A typical summer scene around this time of year...
Taken in Bellaire, Michigan last weekend.
Today, I was again happy to learn another image will lend itself towards creating a soothing environment for those in need of medical care.
My image simply titled Viceroy will be sent this week to hang in the RiverBend Medical Pavilion in Eugene, Oregon.
I hope to continue along this line of photography work, as I find it very personally satisfying to be involved in helping others while promoting beautiful images created from nature at the same time.
This image was taken at Grand River Park in Ottawa County.
Time to give my husband Russ a good advertising plug!
Russ (aka Magic Buzz) will be at the West Michigan Whitecaps as the featured performer this coming Saturday, July 26.
Check out his blog to see how much fun everyone has been having during his performances at the home games...
Just click the game date to purchase and print your tickets at home!
A reminder - I have a gallery show and reception at the Glen Arbor Art Association! Please stop in and say "Hello!" if you have the chance.
As I mentioned in an earlier post - we did a lot of fun activities over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Here's a few images of us enjoying our day visiting Tad & Sarah Smedes. Tad had one last fling at his house because it has sold. They are newly married (as of April), and are happy to be finally moving under one roof together!
Brats boiled in beer then grilled, mac and cheese, snacks and yummy party food and two GREAT pies (a cherry and a caramel) - washed down with more beer and white sangria. What better way to spend an afternoon?
Well - you could blow on some pinwheels, too...
Then we headed for Grand Haven to enjoy the fireworks over the Grand River channel. They're launched from the musical fountain area, so you can really get a good view of them over the water.
See all photos on Flickr...
Do you need something for your office or home at an affordable price? My first series of poster prints are now available. The UV-coated posters are 12x18 in size. When matted in a 3" mat, it makes for a nice piece in a standard 18x24 frame.
Matting and framing is not included in the price - but - if you aren't handy at matting or framing, high-quality custom framing in a variety of styles and finishes are offered - just ask!
The posters are $18.00 each and quantity discounts are offered. Come take a look! The first series were taken in the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Leelanau areas. More posters will be offered in a few weeks of other locations, so check back soon. I think the next series will be my popular lakeshore and lighthouse images.
I have some very happy guys in my house right now. Why? Because I received this email yesterday afternoon:
Your photo entitled Flyin High over Battle Creek is the winner of this week's Detroit News Celebrate Michigan! photo contest. You win 2 tickets to the Aug. 17 Tigers game at Comerica Park! I hope you can use them. Please send me your full name and mailing address and I'll send the tickets to you.
Also, please tell me a little more about the photo. Your photo and a short story will appear on Page 2A of Saturday's paper and in the Travel section online. Thanks again for sharing your wonderful photo.
What an AMAZING holiday weekend we all had. I don't even know where to start blogging about it all. The last 3 days were pretty much a photographer's dream come true with all the events and fun things I attended - with friends, family and by myself.
I'll start with the BIG event for me - I was able to obtain press pass to attend the 2008 Battle Creek Field of Flight Air Show and Balloon Festival. What a perfect day of photography and weather!
I went down to Battle Creek on Saturday - leaving at 4 am so I could get there for the 6:30 am balloon launch. When I arrived, I discovered they did not take off from the Kellogg airport on this morning. Some days they fly out of the airport - some days they fly in to it. Someone on the airport grounds told me he thought they were south of town someplace.
So, I ended up doing an unexpected "chase" of them when I started seeing them rise up on the horizon to the south. As I drove (not having a CLUE where I was headed - I know nothing about Battle Creek!) - I decided to turn down a side street. I saw a "dead end" sign - and thought - "Well - now I'm stuck! What will I do now?".
But to my absolute DELIGHT... the road dead-ended into a gorgeous lake! I jumped out and started snapping away. The balloons were rising over the lake and the sun was just coming up. One of the homeowners came out and laughed when I told him I had no idea what lake I was on. He told me it was Goguac Lake, and was nice enough to tell me he didn't mind if I went out on his dock or backyard.
I haven't even scratched the surface in terms of how many images I shot - but I'm posting a few images here of the of the balloons coming over the lake, and a few others. I wished that more of them had come over the lake itself- they sort of skirted around it (the Post balloon was the only one that actually came OVER the lake itself). How much better could my luck be to turn down an unknown street - and end up in front of a great lake??? Someone was watching out for me there...
Then - I went back to the airshow and caught all sorts of plane photos. Military jets, biplanes, people doing skywriting, etc. I caught some very cool shots.
The icing on the cake was ... the media coordinator managed to get me into a balloon flight! Yes - I was able to go up at 6:30 pm and ride for an hour and a half over Battle Creek! 
I boarded the Yellow Brick Road piloted by Pat Brouillet of Kankakee, Illinois. We flew north and had a wonderful bird's eye view of downtown and the Kalamazoo River. I learned a lot about ballooning, and probably asked him more questions than he cared to answer! Pat was very generous in his offer to share the ballooning experience with me. In fact, his whole family participates in the ballooning and were in the chase vehicle below us.
We went up as high as about 3000' at one point (and mind you - I can't hardly climb up a ladder for fear of heights!). But it wasn't scary at all - I never felt fear, not even for a moment. It's peaceful and serene and you can see so many things that you'd never see from an airplane. I was most amazed by how much you can HEAR while up there - you can hear all sorts of things like ice cream trucks, barking dogs (tons of those!) and people yelling up at you to say hello!
We were with about 30 - 40 other balloons during the launch. Pat was explaining that it isn't really so much a "race" as I had thought - but rather - the balloonists are attempting to make their way to a large marked X-target on the ground. Once they can get near it, they drop a beanbag marked down onto the "X", and hope to be the closest to the mark. Sort of a "hole in one" from sky level!
We flew for an hour and a half - it was a very slow ride with very little wind. In fact, I could tell it was going a bit TOO slow for Pat! Everyone was having a hard time reaching the target areas. There's enough propane in the tanks of his balloon to fly about 2 hours in hot weather (3 hours in cold) and after an hour an a half, we finally reached the target. Once he tried his luck at tossing the beanbag down to the target, it was time to land before running out of fuel!
We tried to come down once in a very "residential" neighborhood (which really surprised me!) and were grazing the treetops (literally) in order to slow the balloon down. But the ground crew couldn't quite grab the line dropped down in time and there were power lines coming up. So Pat quickly aborted that landing, and chose a baseball field at an elementary school a few blocks away. We were greeted by a lot of smiling neighbors and excited children at touchdown.
A side note - someone earlier in the day told me to snap off a tree branch and bring it back for good luck - but I was a bit too amazed that we were brushing through trees in a wicker basket up in the sky to think about grabbing a branch! I was trying to make sure I didn't catch one in the face, actually.
It was an experience of a lifetime, really. I came home sun burnt and very tired, but one happy gal! Thank you to the Brouillet family for sharing your sport with me. I also want to thank Patti Mitchell and all the gals in the Festival Media Center who arranged the flight, guarded my camera gear, kept me in bottles of cold water and who even made me a nice ham sandwich! Thank you to Lisa Jensen, editor at Michigan Blue magazine for helping arrange my press pass in such short notice.
And finally, thank you to my family for living without me for a very long day (the boys had a very fun day at the Wabasis Lake beach, so it couldn't have been too rough...).
See More Photos on Flickr:
The Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art of the Midland Center for the Arts is working in conjunction with Governor’s Residence Artist’s Program to assist the Governor in putting together a body of artwork to embellish the Governor’s Residence in Lansing.
I submitted four works for consideration, and just found out yesterday, two of the pieces have been considered for inclusion in the project. That means these two photos (Serenity and DH Day Farm) have to this point, have cleared two phases of a three-phase jury to be included in the final exhibition.
The first jury was conducted by a team of jurors at the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art. Then, those works selected from the first round were organized in a Power Point presentation for the Residence Selection Committee to make a second selection.
At this point, I now must take the actual framed pieces to the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art in Midland next week, where the staff of the museum will load and transport the all the works to the Governor’s residence. The third and final selection of works will be completed by the First Family themselves. The First Family will make their final selections July 28 th and the works will be installed July 28 and 29, 2008. An opening reception will be held in Fall of 2008 and all participating artists will receive an invitation to attend.
Selected works will be on exhibit in the Governor’s residence from August 2008 through July of 2009.
Come on everyone - send your "good luck" vibes this way - I'd like to get invited to the reception!
Learn more about the Governor's residence...
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