One very huge painting

Penny Corradine and Bill Faulkner on the motorized equipment in front of a small portion of their summer project

Penny in front of a small section of her art

A day off school on Friday, so J and I took a field trip to see our friends, Penny Corradine and Bill Faulkner of Wolfpack Studios, at their project in downtown Calgary.
    Quite the Project:  This Summer, Penny  was commissioned to re-furbish the mural, Early Stampede Parade on the Calgary Stampede Grounds.  Penny originally painted the mural in 1997.  
      Bill took the daughter and I up in the motorized lift that he had to take a course to learn how to run.  He even let the seven-year-old paint a square area on the mural, saying in 10 years she can point to that spot and tell people she painted it.  Needless to say, she was thrilled.
      These photos were taken on the north side of the mural and Corral building.  The larger part of the mural is on the Corral building's east side.  
You'll find an entire photo of this larger area at Early Stampede Parademural at  http://art.calgarystampede.com/art/early-stampede-parade.html.   The website's photo was snapped prior to this Summer's  re-vamp.  You'll just have to venture downtown Calgary to see the latest version!

 Penny and Bill taking a break to assess their work.

Bill trains an up and coming artist

Look how excited the seven-year-old is!

With new(ish) eyes

Thanks to my friend, Bill, at Wolfpack Studios, I’ve been venturing into SLR Digital photography.  Bill lent me his back up camera, a Canon D20.    Oh my,  how wonderful it is  to be using again a camera that allows me to get more detail in photos.  When my daughter was a baby, I finally gave up on film camera, my Nikon FM2.  It was a great camera but it was time to head into the world of digital and carrying a larger camera, along with diaper bag, etc, just wasn’t practical.  For the most part, I was pretty pleased with the point and shoot Canons.   But now that I need to take photos of for my online business, the smaller cameras just weren’t picking up the detail that I would have liked.   (Besides the fact that my two dogs did in the last one)

         Because it's a borrowed camera, I’ve stayed close to home (and as far as possible from two dogs) for testing out the newer-to-me technology.  But one morning after taking daughter to the bus, I was elated that I could capture a photo of the moon – though the 50mm lens was a bit limiting.  But it hasn’t limited getting a few photos of daughter out on a walk – never before have I been able to take photos in rapid succession.

      I’m in Toronto now and yesterday ventured down to  Downtown Camera with the help of my friend, Carrie Cockburn (graphic artist, jewelry designer and photographer).   Check out Carrie's beautiful photography on her blog.   Wonderful to see Carrie -- we roomed together in my second year of journalism  and hadn't seen each other in at least 25 years.  

     Later today I pick up my new-to-me Nikon D200.  It’s not the latest in bells and whistles but it is a professional camera, sturdy and can do much   -- once I learn all about it!!  Excited about seeing the world in newer eyes and lens!