Rainy Days and Mondays

     Today was a rainy Monday. Rainy Mondays are becoming a trend here in North Florida. The best part of today is it was warm... warmer than it has been all week. The warm moist air over the cold water that surrounds St. Augustine made for a misty to foggy day. The kind of day you want to stay inside, but I didn´t. Today I went to the Bayfront and took photographs of the mist, boats and seagulls.

     Over the past couple of weeks I have had a chance to go out and spend quality time with my camera. The result has been a number of images I am pleased with. This is good, becuase the longer I am a student of photography the harder it is to take pictures that excite me. But, something happened today that has me a little worried.

     I am a Nikon girl... I love my Nikon. It has been my almost constant companion for almost 5 years. That may be close to 100 years old in DSLR years. To say it is an ancient body is probably an understatement. My camera has been with me through months of overseas travel, it has weathered planes, trains, busses and automobiles. It has been soaked in some pretty severe storms, been dropped (twice), and had assorted things dropped on it on too many times to count. Through it all it has continued to take photographs.

     Today, it did not taked pictures... for a little while anyway. On gray days I usually shoot on Aperture Priority Mode. So, I set my mode, my ISO, made a couple other adjustments,  composed my photo and hit the shutter. Nothing happened, in fact everything went black. Where my Aperture setting usally shows up in the viewfinder there was a blinking F0. What the heck is that? Oh well, as with everything digital the first thing I did was to shut the camera off, turned it back on changed modes and took a few shots. It seemed to work fine in Shutter Priority so I went back to the other mode and everything worked. Now, I just have to keep the camera happy.

     I am not opposed to purchasing a new camera. In fact a new camera has been in my budget for over a year. I am just opposed to purchasing a camera I will not be happy with for a least another five years. But, to love Nikon means you have to be patient. I just hope my camera is as healthy and I am patient.

Website -    www.georgianick.com
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Twitter -     http://twitter.com/#!/georgiagnick

Thinking Warm Thoughts

Even though Florida is the only state in the Union without snow... it is cold in St. Augustine.

This has been a great day to catch up on post processing my backlog of images and uploading photographs to my website. Maybe, someday I will get them keyworded and separated into the appropriate galleries.

The photograph of the Great Egret was taken a few weeks ago on the dock at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina. This beautiful bird had stationed itself on one of the finger piers and was enjoying the winter sun. The incredible color of the deep blue water was created by a cloudless royal blue sky reflecting onto the bayfront.

Over the past few days, I have enjoyed looking at all of the images of snow covered mountains, cities, roads and trails. They are beautiful. But, I am glad that all I can add to the mix is an Egret, and not even a Snowy Egret just a Great one.

Wishing you warm thoughts on a cold winter day.

Georgia


Website -    www.georgianick.com
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/georgianickphotography
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Thoughts on Travel

It is the first time this photograph has left my archive.

If I were to do the countdown of my ¨Top 10 Photographs of 2010¨ most of them would be travel photographs. Only a few of these photographs will ever make it to the gallery, some will be displayed in shows at local schools etc., the rest will reside in my archives and if I get better organized my website.

It is not that I do not love my photographs of St. Augustine. I do. And... there are many more photographs of our wonderful little city for me to take. Sunrises over the Atlantic, sunsets over the Intra-Coastal Waterway, the St. Augustine Lighthouse,  cobblestone alleys, the ever changing parade of sailboats moored on our beautiful bayfront, the Bridge of Lions, and our historic buildings frame scenes that transform almost every minute. I live in the type of town most artist dream of.

When we travel my favorite thing to bring home is art. I purchase small paintings and photographs of the places we visit. They are memories I am purchasing (mostly from local artist) and bringing home to keep. Plus, I take my own pictures, thousands of them. I create slideshows with my photographs and set them to music. Then at anytime I can enjoy the sights and music of the places we have visited.

Our gallery is owned by local artist. It is the type of gallery I seek out when traveling. We are located in the oldest continually occupied city in the United States. When people visit the city of St. Augustine... they also want to purchase memories to take home. So... most of the time in the gallery my art has a very local flavor.  And, because I love the thought of my photographs being someone else's memory I take extreme care in selecting and processing only the best of the best.

So for now my travel photographs will continue to be my memories. And... someday, maybe I will create a venue to share them with the world.

Website:     www.georgianick.com
Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/georgianickphotography
Twitter:      http://twitter.com/#!/georgiagnick

First Friday - Two doors down they'll be having a party!

Aviles Street 

St. Augustine Celebrates Art - Friday, January 7, 2011 

It is almost time for First Friday Art Walk. The Art Walk is held the First Friday of every month in downtown St. Augustine. Participating galleries show new art from our very talented artist community, introduce their featured artist of the month, the St. Augustine Art Association holds their awards ceremonies for the new month's show and the whole art community comes together to celebrate.

St. Augustine's Art Walk is like many Art Walks and Art Crawls held throughout the country. Except, where else other than "The Oldest City"  can you stroll down the brick streets of some of the oldest neighborhoods in the country? If walking is not your thing... grab a trolley. The red trains support the art walk by having trains available to take participants from one area to another.  I am not sure there is a good count of how many galleries and businesses participate in the Art Walk. But, if you want to see them all you had better start at 5:00 and be ready to keep moving until the doors close at 9:00 p.m.

Aviles Street is fast becoming the "Art Street" of St. Augustine. On our little street alone (Aviles Street is only about 4 blocks long and two of those blocks are mostly residential) we have five wonderful galleries, a boutique and restaurants featuring outdoor dining. In fact  two doors down from the Aviles Gallery -  Worley Favor Pottery Gallery will be celebrating their fourth year on Aviles Street. And, I am sure our artist will make it down there to say "Congratulations".

The Artist of Aviles Gallery are busy sprucing up the gallery, changing out art and getting ready to "Kick Off" 2011.  Join us for drinks and snacks then check out the new work our members have been creating over the Holidays.

www.georgianick.com

Aviles Street

Hello World...

My name is Georgia Nick. I am a photographer, traveler, digital artist and CoOwner/CoFounder of the Aviles Gallery - 11C Aviles Street in St. Augustine, Florida.

Blogging... what a way to chronicle the events of the day. And, what a great collection of interest I have to talk about. My art, I "paint with Light and a digital brush", the gallery (14 wonderful award winning artist all nestled together in a unique space on a historic street), the street, we have more characters on our street than any "Reality Show" on television and our characters are really... real.

Welcome to Aviles Street the oldest platted street in the United States. This street has been showing up on maps since the mid 1570's.

This photograph was taken in early October of 2010. We were preparing for the "Fiesta de Aviles" a three day long street festival. This festival came complete with the "Running of the Bulls", the Art Walk for Breast Cancer, First Friday Art Walk and Sangria Sunday. It was a great weekend and great way to start of the fall and Holiday seasons.

www.georgianick.com