MAW's latest photos and design

2016 is flying by! I have stayed busy booking new clients, nurturing current professional relationships and building my catalog of product photography.

I've had the pleasure of working with several artists this year, including (clockwise from top left) Olivia Molinaro Landry, Kris Prunitsch, Charlotte Terrell, and Miranda Herrick.

I've also been working on independent projects, both for practice and to show samples of my studio work.

 

I've had plenty of design projects to keep me busy, as well, including several ongoing marketing projects for The One and Only Bill Davis and Very Entertaining Records.

The color photo below is a portrait taken by me, which came out so much better than I expected. Photo credits for the other images go to Miranda Herrick for the photo of Bill and me and Brett Schenning for his photo of Jeff Blaney.

You are seeing that right! I've been joining my charming husband for most of his gigs over the past six years or so, and am now fancy enough to be in photos with him! He's always been very encouraging, but I've kept myself in the background for multiple reasons, one being that it's hard to be in a photo when you're the person photographing.

While the above images are all being used for digital marketing, I have also had the opportunity to create some physical promotional products, as well, including these cards for Kris Prunitsch and Miranda Herrick. 

 

It's been a wonderful year so far for MAW Studio, and I'm looking forward to sharing more with you soon. Contact me if you'd like pricing for any photography or design projects.

Works & Days - A Collaboration

It all started with a little gallery named MIR in the Arcade. At the time, my co-worker, Miranda Herrick, and I were just warming up to each other to become friends. She was running MIR and mentioned that she could always use extra hands to help in the gallery during Art Crawls.
I took the opportunity to exercise my photography muscle again, and I started documenting the openings. 

One of the first showings of Miranda's series, Reflective

I have always loved Miranda's knack for interesting art displays. The four photos in the middle are a small series of mine called From the Sky

Photographing openings at MIR Gallery naturally led to me covering the openings Miranda has with her works in other galleries and spaces. Through the years, I have amassed several examples of her Works and Days presentations. 

MIR Gallery

Getting ready for the wall

Again with the excellent hanging

What started as an exercise ended up being a huge professional boon for both of us. Miranda recently published a book of her Works and Days series. The book contains all 365 of the drawings from that series in chronological order, which also spans the color wheel. She used several of my photographs in the introduction of the book, which means I am published in an art book. 

Woo hoo!!

One of the best things about working with Miranda is that it started as friends just looking to celebrate art and get it out into the world. I don't think either of us anticipated our working together at MIR would turn into a partnership with such far-reaching effects. Over the years, my desire to flex that photography muscle has led to me being able to provide Miranda with images of her work in different spaces, the design of her website, and some of the promotional materials for her openings. While we do have a system of compensation, the best thing I get out of working with Miranda is seeing her growing success and knowing I helped, even if only a little bit.

One of the cards I designed for Miranda's paired opening with Scott E. Hill

Miranda and me at one of the MIR openings in 2010

The moral of the story? If you have the instinct to help out a friend while you work on your own craft, follow it. The least that will happen is you will strengthen your bond of friendship. From there, the sky is the limit.

Works and Days can be purchased at Customs House Museum in Clarksville, Bennett Galleries Nashville and Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Or, you can reach Miranda via Facebook. 

Laying the Groundwork in the New Year

It's here, it's here! The new year is HERE!! I had a great New Year's Eve - my husband and I chilled out for a few hours after work, then got dressed up, went to dinner at a local brewpub, headed to a party half a block from our house, and rang in 2015 with new friends and a bit of bubbly.
I am not a big resolution maker. I find if I want to do something or break a habit, I have to just decide on it and DO IT. However, I do believe in setting goals and making a plan to attain them. Following are a few of the goals I'm working toward in 2015 and beyond.

Writing and building my email list
In my research, I am finding that writing, whether it's a newsletter or a blog or a hand-written note, is the backbone of most successful businesses. My email list is the most important aspect of my business in certain regards, and one of my goals is to build it up by writing regularly about my projects and what I learn over the year. In 2014, I posted six times on this blog. I'm setting a reasonable bar-I'm going to double that number this year. That means one post per month, which is an entirely attainable goal. Heck, I might even post more (fingers crossed)!

Old fashioned and new fangled - both very valuable.

Of course, intentions are great, but how will I manage to write more? Again, I'm starting small. I am going to try to spend between ten and thirty minutes per day writing. This will probably mean I have to get up a little earlier, but since my office re-design, I have a lovely creative space to write, photograph, and design. Did I mention my office faces east, so I always get the morning light? I can't think of a better motivator than the morning sun (featuring coffee) to get my creative juices flowing.

Continuing to say NO to things that aren't a priority
In May of 2014, I hit a wall. We had inherited a dog, my husband was experiencing job fluctuation which led to financial instability, and I was working on my part of a collaborative art show, running my business, and singing with a few different acts in town. I basically had a breakdown, and decided that it was time to cut out some extracurriculars. Now, I have a much better handle of my schedule (sort of), and my resolve is firm in what I'm available to do. If it's a design project or photography, I'm all ears, but if it's another band project or a show in a gallery, I'm out. I have time to sing with Bill and his different incarnations, and that's about it. While I love showing my photos, it's incredibly time-consuming and expensive to put a show together. To read more about how I found my resolve, check out this post from last year.

A shot from the Very Entertaining Holiday Show. I love being involved with Bill's music.

Being present
We live in a society where being busy is seemingly becoming synonymous with being important. "Busy" is becoming a four-letter word to me, even though I do tend to be occupied for most of the time I'm awake. I'm making efforts to minimize the use of that word in my daily life.
That being said, my husband tends to get irritated with me when we sit on the couch to unwind at the end of a night and watch a little TV; I usually make it about five minutes into whatever we're watching before I pick up my phone and start Instagramming, shopping for work clothes or photo props, loading my Buffer for Twitter, or any number of things a person with a marketing job might do while having their entertainment spoon-fed to them. While I don't necessarily plan to entirely stop while watching TV, I am guilty of zoning out when I really should be engaging the people around me, especially my husband. I am actively working on using my time better to market, and not wasting so much window shopping or scrolling.

A photo from April 2009. This sums us up pretty perfectly, and I don't want to lose this joy.

This is just the start to my list of ways to make my 2015 the best year yet. Do you have any resolutions or goals? Share them in the comments!

Back In The Game

It's been a while since I've posted, which I apologize for, but I have been both busy as heck and suffering from a case of writer's block.

The good stuff is still happening! I've been singing plenty with The One and Only Bill Davis; he is finishing the cleaning up of his Omnichord X-mas album, and sending it out to be mastered within the next day or two. I was lucky enough to be asked to sing on one of the tracks AND do the layout of the album cover. It's coming along well so far - it definitely helps to work with a person who knows what he wants.

Screen shot of the work in progress

Bill is not only a great singer/composer/arranger, but he's been flexing his design muscles on his last two albums. The Up To Something! artwork was entirely his concept - I just did the layout design. He created the drawings for the Omnichord record ages ago in a Paint program on an old PC laptop, and, again, I'm just laying it out. I love that I married a man who likes to cross creative genres!

Front and back covers-do you see the faint drawing of Bill in the background of the back cover?

I recently reconnected with a client I had worked with in late 2012/early 2013, and she gave me a copy of a postcard/pamphlet cover that I had laid out months ago. She just sent it out to 200 people, so I'm pleased it came out so well.

My next project with these wonderfully creative folks is designing Rob's website

Here are another couple of ads I've contributed to this year:

I did the photography, post-production, and layout for this Frames By U ad, featured in the
Nashville Arts Magazine Gift Guide

I took the photograph used in the ad for Bennett Galleries, also found in the
Nashville Arts Holiday Gift Guide

Even with writer's block, I'm so grateful to have all of these great opportunities to work on so many creative projects!