My work will be displayed at Collect: Art Gallery in Rockford, IL until November 10. This is part of the First Friday event in Rockford that features shopping, art and music. My gallery is titled Life, Untouched and will feature three of my favorite things—babies, marching band and alpacas! I would love if you could join me at the opening on Friday, October 5 from 5-9p.m. Follow these links for more information: Collect: Art Gallery and First Friday.
It’s almost here! The Second Annual Oregon AlpacaFest: Celebrating all things alpaca will run from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 7 at Sauk Creek Alpacas, 746 Heather Lane, Oregon, Wisconsin.
Come meet the alpacas of Sauk Creek and learn why these irresistible critters are so popular. There will be spinning and carding demonstrations and local alpaca breeders will be on hand to answer questions about farm design, diet, routine medical care, business planning and tax benefits, and processing fiber.
Get an early start on your holiday shopping! You’ll find alpaca socks (including our extremely popular Extreme Alpaca Socks), gloves, hats yarn, rovings, felted soaps, teddy bears, alpaca photos and cards, Wildtree, Longaberger baskets and Spry Whimsy’s popular felted hats. We’ve got twice as many vendors coming this year and we’re excited to welcome local alpaca breeders who will share their experience and knowledge of the business of breeding alpacas and processing their fleece.
Be sure to “like” Annual Oregon AlpacaFest on Facebook. Contact Lynne Johnson at 608.291.2131 or lrjohnson@mailbag.com for further information.
I love alpacas. I’ve always wanted to sell products to people that were unique and fun, something I can’t typically do with my lifestyle photography. I think it’s that time, maybe alpacas are the next big thing?! Make sure you check out the holiday alpaca card : )
Greeting cards come in 4×6, 5×5 and 5×7. They are blank inside and are printed on watercolor paper so there is a bit of texture. If you’re not familiar with alpacas, there are a few facts listed on the back of each card.
Single Cards
4×6: $4
5×5: $4
5×7: $5
Assorted Packs
4×6 (8): $22
5×5 (4): $15
5×7 (4): $16
5×7 (8): $25
The image in front here won the animal portrait contest in the September Issue of PDN. Click here for the post.
One of my favorite parts about what I do is that I get to document families as they grow. I’m going on my third year photographing this adorable family. I photographed the birth of their daughter and have been keeping up with them ever since.
I have been photographing the Oregon Marching Band for six years now and am so honored that a bunch of the students who are seniors this year asked me to take their pictures.
Photo District News (PDN) is a great magazine for professionals that I receive monthly. A few months ago I saw they were having a faces photo competition with a category for animal portraits. I’ve never entered my work into any kind of contest, so I went for it.
This morning, I opened up the September Issue to see their cute faces : )
Madison Magazine sent me to Door County last weekend to photograph Crystal and Jim Barnard. They have been driving down to Madison to sell their produce at the Farmer’s Market for the last 40 years! They drive twice a week 4-5 hours…that’s dedication. The May issue will be out mid-April. Since it’s not the shortest drive up to Door County and because I’ve never been, I decided to go up for the weekend with my dog, Novus. He was an excellent subject : )
Saturday night, we checked into our Super 8, pet-friendly hotel room (Only $50!) and decided to quickly leave to go exploring. Side Note: Door County is the tourist hot spot in Wisconsin and this time of year… it was dead. Really dead. Stores and restaurants are closed, hotel rooms are 75% cheaper…it’s a good time to go if you don’t like a ton of people around.
We left the hotel around 5:30pm, so the sun was starting to set….of course the light was gorgeous so we stopped at a few spots along the way before getting to Cave Point. Now, for the highlight of the trip: Cave Point. Such a great place! We had to drive quite a bit to get to the water where the trail started. We didn’t pass any cars, and we didn’t see any people out and about walking, which didn’t worry me until the next thing happend. We head towards the water and start to walk along the tree line, because it’s so gorgeous, I had to take Novus’ portrait. Meanwhile, this bird starts pecking his way towards us. I wasn’t worried until he got about a foot from Novus, who nicely sat there watching the bird. I became a little worried that they were all of a sudden going to attack each other, so Novus and I turned around to head for the car. “Really Beth…it’s a bird.” So we turned around to walk on the trail for a bit. Then, this bird! Yes, a medium sized brown bird started sprinting after us. He would run, then stop to peck around, then run after us again… At one point I started running, which didn’t help Novus’ nerves. He knew I was scared…of this bird. But he just kept following us!! Thank goodness I haven’t seen the horror film The Birds! I was scared enough as it is.
We made our way to the white rocks where I thought we’d be safe because surely the bird wasn’t going to follow us down there. Of course he did. I wasn’t about to dash back past him, so we made our way along the rocks hoping to climb back to up the tree line, heading for the car. No luck. They were all way too steep. The worst thoughts came to my mind….the tide was going to come in (which wouldn’t likely happen on Lake Michigan), or the bird would attack us and I wouldn’t be able to call for help because A. no one was out there and wouldn’t be for awhile and B. I had no cell phone use! So we trekked back to where we came from along the rocks and climbed back up to the path, which led us back to the car. I wanted so badly to keep walking along the trail…but that damn bird!
I called Dana, a good friend of mine, once my iPhone had a few bars…. “I don’t know about this whole wilderness thing! This bird…..” I want to be an outdoorsy person but I’m going to have to have at least one person with me next time : )
The rest of the trip was fantastic. But again, this bird was a pretty hilarious and scary highlight.
The blue wall you see here was the side of a small nautical nick-nack kind of store… that was, of course, closed.
Cave Point… The bird was to the left of the frame.
Novus is actually looking at the bird.
I must go back here to see a movie someday : )