Hey everyone! For those of you that may be unfamiliar with my artwork, all of it comes from my photography. I take a photo and then edit it to a completely new style. I use a couple of different programs to get there, Adobe Lightroom and BeFunky. With BeFunky, I use filters to get the desired effect and then go into Lightroom and work on my colors. Well, BeFunky just introduce a whole new series of GFX filters. These are truly remarkable. The watercolor one especially looks like a watercolor painting. In fact, after I printed one of my new pieces on Red River Paper's Aurora Art 250 White paper, I got real watercolor paints and added some of my own painted strokes directly on the print. Once it dried, you could not tell the areas that I painted from the printed artwork. Truly amazing! I am now introducing my Watercolor Collection available in the shop. Currently they are available as a 7"x9" print on an 8"x10" sheet of Red River Paper's Aurora Art White 300. Made in the USA using 100% cotton, Aurora Art White 300 is an acid-free paper made from cotton linters. These linters are considered "recovered fibers" by the EPA. By using linters, Aurora production is putting to use what would have become waste. I love this paper! (I am not affiliated with Red River Paper and I do not get anything from them for saying these things, I just really love their papers)
The image below is of a tree located not far from my house. This was shot during a thunderstorm that had just passed us and there was constant cloud to cloud lightning going on behind the tree. There was a blanket of fog covering the ground too. It was quite the show.
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![]() Ever since I closed my gallery in Taos, I have been looking for a new space. I am being picky about my potential new space and that takes time and patience. I have flown to Oregon once and Seattle three times to check out spaces. I have spoken to commercial real estate brokers in Colorado, Arizona and here in Oklahoma too. I am currently waiting on a space to become available in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. Pioneer Square is the first neighborhood of Seattle and there are lots of art galleries in the district. The building I am waiting on has been vacant for several years. It's over a hundred years old and a new group just bought it. They are getting it ready to put on the commercial lease market. I am one of the first businesses in line for one of the spaces. But it is very much a hurry up and wait situation. I have lived in the Seattle metro three different times over the course of my life. I love it! I love the Pacific North West. There is so much to see and do. Things in Seattle you must experience... 1. Pike Place Market - this is the fish market where the guys throw the fish, check out the lower levels too 2. Seattle Waterfront - cool shops, great food, ferris wheel, ferries and cruise ships coming and going 3. Seattle Aquarium - really cool and immersive 4. Space Needle - has gotten expensive to go up but still cool to see, go up if you can though 5. Ferry Ride to Bainbridge Island - I like to ride over and turn around and come right back, best view of Seattle 6. Pioneer Square - Cool shops and art galleries 7. Go East - If you have a car, drive east on I-90, through the tunnels, across the floating bridges and out to Snoqualmie Falls * 8. Go South - If you have a car, head to Point Defiance Park in Tacoma. You won't be disappointed. ** 9. Flagship REI Store - If you like camping and outdoor gear, this is it! 10. Washington Park Arboretum and Volunteer Park - beautiful parks (Volunteer has the Bruce and Brandon Lee grave sites) * If you don't want to go all the way to Snoqualmie Falls, go to the botanical gardens in Bellevue. You may even be able to take public transport there. Public transport in Seattle is really quite good. I love to use it to get around. ** There is a ferry that goes over to Point Defiance but I'm not sure that it's any quicker. It may be more of an adventure though. After the crazy year of festivals of 2022, I was looking for a more cost effective way to show and sell my work. I was represented in the Taos Artist Collective in Taos and Wildfire Gallery on Paseo in OKC. Sales were ok in those two galleries but I wanted to be more proactive in the sales process as well. Touring festivals was great and I sold a ton of art. My sales were over ten times what I had ever done previously! But my expenses to tour like that were over six figures! I needed a way to continue to actively sell my work and get it in front of a lot of art buyers. I found a beautiful gallery space in Taos, NM that had become available and it had living quarters too! I opened Taos New West Art Gallery on Kit Carson Rd. just a half block from the Plaza. It was in line with several other galleries up Kit Carson. Locals called it "Gallery Row". The gallery was a gorgeous 300 year old adobe building with a kiva fireplace in the main gallery. The gallery showed my work plus 10 other local and regional artists in the "New West" genre. Unfortunately, due to several factors, I made the difficult decision to close the gallery in November of the same year. Sales had been good but Taos was starting some construction and tourism projects that were going to very negatively affect traffic to the gallery. I needed to close before I started really losing money. It was a smart business decision but a tough emotional one. A lot was learned about opening and running a business. Overall, it was another pretty cool year. Still better than clocking in for someone else!
I'm guessing that after going back to work as COVID was waning, I stopped writing here and honestly forgot about this blog. I was dealing with memory issues after the car wreck. I was missing lots of pieces of memories for about a year and a half. What seemed to help was diving head first into my artwork, sans blog. I went full time as as artist Aug, 25th 2021. I had been doing art festivals on the side for over ten years, nut just in my home state of Oklahoma. My first out of state show was in Evergreen, CO and I killed it! The following weekend was another art fest in the same town and even in the same park, so I was a bit worried that maybe that town had had it's fill on the first weekend, but no, it was the same results! I was officially off and running as a full time artist. That fall, I had not booked a lot of shows because of deadlines missed since I still had a full time job when those deadline passed. But, I started applying to shows for the following spring and summer of 2022. I ended up doing 26 festivals in '22. I had shows in Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Texas and Arizona. I bought a travel trailer and new truck to pull it. It was crazy, exciting super fun, a ton of work, and way too expensive. I met so many artists on the circuit and learned something from everyone of them. Of course there were awesome shows and there were not so great shows. One thing that kept me motivated and positive was an idea that I kept in my head, and mentioned to other artists that may have been having a bad show. The thing I kept saying and fully believing (still do) is "A bad day at an art festival is, and always will be, better than clocking in for someone else". My summer was truly spent camping in Colorado, going to art festivals on the weekends to make money, and fly-fishing and creating more art during the week. One can only be so lucky! "A bad day at an art festival is, and always will be, better than clocking in for someone else"
Couple of exciting updates! Award! - Honorable Mention at Oklahoma City's Paseo District Photofest with this shot. This is a home made car made from a Mazda Miata. The owner of the car pulled up in front of our building at work and thought it would be cool to take pics. I agreed! I have it printed on Kodak Endura Premier Metallic paper. The thing pops! Award! - At the Medicine Park Flute Fest and Art Walk, I won 1st place artist! I had a fairly large representation of my current style of work. Here I'll post one of my newer pieces. It's definitely a favorite of mine. Title - Two Crows. It is said that 2 crows is a sign of good luck. So far, I'd have to agree. Publish! I have been shooting different shots within the gallery at work and of the building. Our art director took notice and asked me to shoot some very specific images. This one of the outside of our building along with the newly installed Julian Opie piece titled "Faime Walking" was recently published in Issue 22 of Art Desk Magazine. Gallery! Now showing in Taos, NM! I have started selling with the Taos Artist Collective this fall. They are a very active, vibrant gallery right at the entrance to the Taos Plaza. It is truly exciting to be among some world class art in northern New Mexico. Here is a new piece available now. Title: "Rituals" available in a limited edition run of 25 printed on a 20"x30" premium gallery canvas and framed with a maple float frame. Bring on the sacred!
It's May 17, 2020. My last post was longer ago than I hoped. We are in the middle of a worldwide virus pandemic and very few people have been out or to work or much of anywhere since the middle of March. Here in Oklahoma, restaurants are starting to ease back open but with half capacity. I have been "working" from home since March 13th. Sounds great, except, on April 6th, my wife and I were in a pretty bad car wreck and I was limited on what I was really able to do. Bed, couch, recliner, try to walk a bit, bed, couch, recliner, soft foods and no pain killers. I am about 95% now. Today, I walked about 3.5 miles. That's the most I have done in months. Just gotta keep moving. I have been real antsy to get out and go camping, although, I still barely get comfortable sleeping on nice soft surfaces, even with an air mat, sleeping on the ground might be challenging. During all this "work" from home time, all the campgrounds have been closed due to the virus, oh and gas is as cheap as it's been since high school ($1.25 /gal). I want to get out soooo bad! Since we have been relegated to the house, I have been shooting around the house and our neighborhood pond. It has been nice to go out for walks in the morning with my camera and just see what I can find. We've had a mated pair of mallard ducks, turtles, a rabbit, egrets, blue herons, a green heron, geese, a dead rat on the side walk (very strange), snakes, great sunsets, and thunderstorms. I did some night photography along with some long exposure shots with panning too. All of the spring/ summer art festivals and shows have all been canceled so I have been working on the Etsy shop (now closed). I have added new note card packs and a bunch of new art. Now through the rest of May, most everything in the shop is 25% off and free shipping! Thank you for staying with me. I hope everyone is staying healthy and practicing proper social distancing.
Peace! ![]() Back in May of 2007, I had been living in the Seattle area and was a total rookie, wanna-be photographer. I would frequently go on exploration hikes. I would get in the Jeep and drive to some general idea of a location. This was usually as defined as, I'm going west today and see what I find. I was always looking for someplace pretty to explore. It was a time before I considered myself a photographer or had even really thought about what that meant. I was on the look out for an afternoon get-a-way. I had a camera and a tripod although I really didn't know how to use either very well. On these explorations, I would drive until I found something that looked interesting, stop and check it out. On this day in May, it was a beautiful spring day. I had stopped earlier at Lake Cushman. After spending maybe an hour here, I decided to move on. Hopped in the Jeep and headed into the Olympic National Forest. This is a lovely drive. Everything was green and lush. Eventually I ended up at a sign for Mount Ellinor. The peak is only 5944' I thought. It's a beautiful day and early enough let's do this. If it gets hairy or looks like I am going to get lost, I can always turn around and walk back down this trail. Easy day hike! "Cool, snow!" I jumped out of the Jeep, grabbed my light corduroy jacket, backpack with camera gear and strapped on my tripod with a bungee cord and headed up the path. This is nice I thought. There is no one out here. I can hear wild birds chatting with each other. As expected, there was a slight uphill climb on this trail. About 15 minutes into my relaxing hike, I saw a small patch of snow in the shade of a fallen log. Cool, snow! As I continued along, more snow. And more snow. And more snow. It was getting thick but I was on a well defined path.
I have had a personal blog for years that while some of it pertained to my work, some of it was more personal than I wanted to share on my photography site. Here is the new blog. I may carry some of the stories over from the old, but this page will be about photography, art, exploration and adventure. I hope you enjoy this journey with me.
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Trayson is an adventure seeker, explorer, an award winning and published photographer and artist that has called Oklahoma; Washington State; Miami, Florida; Taos, NM and Manitou Springs, CO home. He currently resides in Oklahoma City.
About This Blog
I have had a personal blog for years that while some of it pertained to my work, some of it was more personal than I wanted to share on my photography site. Here is the new blog. I may carry some of the stories over from the old, but this page will be about photography, art, exploration and adventure. I hope you enjoy this journey with me.
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