Art On The Commons was a big success this year. After two years of not meeting in person, seeing the community come out and support all the artists at the fair was great. This year I’ve done art fairs in Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, and Dayton. I have two more scheduled —the art fair at Dayton Art Institute Octoberfest and the Ohio Mart in Akron. I have created new photography for each city this year and created some fantastic unique photography. I started working last year on new architectural style photographs that I had to wait a year to show because the 2021 Art On The Commons fair was canceled. The first photograph I created in this new series was of the old Dayton Daily News building. After that, I made the Blue Window and the Hulman Building. These photographs were created during the day, so I thought it would be interesting to try a few night photographs. I created Fifth Street and RTA Hub during one of my evening photo shoots. I showed two downtown Dayton Miami River photographs at this year’s Art On The Commons.
On July 4th, 2020, during the pandemic, I got up at 5 am and went downtown to capture a sunrise photograph looking back across the river towards downtown. RiverScape and the Metro Parks had finished the low dam project, and I wanted to use that as the foreground of my photograph. It was eerily quiet, which you would suspect at 6 am. But, animal life didn’t know we were in a pandemic. The ducks and geese were out playing in the water. Then while I was waiting for the light to be just right, a beaver came up behind me and poked his head out of the water to say, “Who are you? You’re not normally here when I make my morning rounds?” Who would have thought I’d see a beaver in downtown Dayton?
The last new photograph I showed wasn’t that new. One of my clients is Kettering Health Network, and I have created regional landscape photographs on display in many of their buildings. I was asked to create a picture that showed the cross on top of the Grandview Hospital building. I did some scouting and found a place just off the Main Street bridge that showed the cross and the Grandview sign. Both the cross and sign are illuminated but didn’t show up well until about 45 minutes after sunset. This image was a 45-second exposure which let the river look smooth as it flowed past. I like the streaks of light from each streetlight on the levy. Kettering Health Network used this image in a couple of different ways, but the most prominent is the 20-foot-long mural in the waiting room of the Grandview emergency room.
I have a page on my website homepage dedicated to each city I have been to this year so you can see all the new photographs I have created. Of course, all the photographs are for sale. I am working on getting all the new photographs on the e-commerce part of my website. You can call or email me with any questions or requests for photographs you want.
Everything you need to know about my Wright Brothers: Then and Now series is on my website. You can find all the photographs and information about my book Wright Brothers: Then and Now there also.
