Judy A Davis Photography

"Southwest" exhibit

2011-01-29T17:11:00.000-07:00

On exhibit at the Tucson International Airport through March 15, 2011.
See more images from the exhibit here.

New Portraits

2010-06-01T14:09:00.003-07:00

Trying some new designs for my website. And this is a couple of the photos from a recent session.
Click to see the Cardenas portraits!

A gift that Mom will LOVE

2010-04-09T13:47:00.003-07:00

Check out my Portrait Galleries

New Equipment

2010-01-21T14:26:00.003-07:00

I finally was forced to buy a new camera after my last family portrait session ended with a broken Canon Rebel XT. I bought the Canon EOS 50D and I love it! My repaired Rebel is now my backup camera. Along with the new camera I also added a Canon ET-65 III 85mm lens and I'm very happy with the preliminary results of the two together!

Family Portraits

2009-10-02T09:18:00.012-07:00

Just finished posting the portraits of the Self family. I think they turned out great and I enjoyed both taking and editing them.

The family really made it easy to churn out a lot of great images - they are not only beautiful, but friendly and comfortable to work with.

This gallery reflects my style of portraiture - casual and fun. As life should be.

Garden Madonna

2009-08-24T12:43:00.007-07:00

My mother's statue of Mary stood in her garden for as long as I can remember. Mom gave it to her mother in 1954 as a Mother's Day gift and brought it home in 1976 after her mother died. Now the Madonna is on my mom's grave site - she died a year ago last September 3rd. My dad wanted her to have it because it meant so much to her. My sister repainted it and although she did a very nice job, Mom's Madonna is just not the same. She's lost the texture that comes with age, the character and the beauty that only time can provide. The texture is still here in the photograph - I'm so glad I took it. In the image, the Garden Madonna is still standing guard over my mom's hydrangeas and Mom is sitting in her chair at the kitchen table watching the goldfinches and the sparrows and, if we're lucky, the indigo bunting, fuss over the feeders.
Garden Madonna

Zoo

2009-07-05T00:41:00.005-07:00

I love visiting the zoo. I feel guilty about loving the zoo because I know that the animals are caged and that they don't really belong caged far from their normal habitats. But how else would I get to see these amazing creatures? And it seems like the Tucson Zoo takes good care of them. At least they are not hunted by poachers, only by photographers.

Nature's art

2009-05-28T10:55:00.004-07:00

When does a photograph become less a snapshot and more a work of art? I carry my camera everywhere I go and I shoot what I see, when I see it: the angles, curves, shadows, highlights and forms – the pieces that shape the whole. ( And the whole too.)

I don’t preconceive my final images very often, so am I an artist? Or am I a tourist?

These photographs are the patterns painted on the beach by wind, water and sand; my “snapshot” of nature’s abstract art.
Beach patterns

The Ocean

2009-05-15T10:16:00.008-07:00

I recently spent a week in Oregon, four days on the northern coast and three days in Portland. I took hundreds of photographs, so many that I'm still editing them four weeks later. I probably took way too many photographs of ocean waves but, being from the desert, I felt the need to record the total experience on the beach, the changing light, the shifting sands and the waves that at certain moments crashed and at other moments undulated softly onto the shore, but always, always moving. There is no one precise way to capture “the ocean.” Every image is a unique and transient moment that will never be seen again.

Sold

2009-03-26T15:46:00.003-07:00

I sold my first piece of artwork today! To an art collector! It was so exciting partly because he was really thrilled about owning the piece. It is also so exciting to imagine my work hanging in someone's art collection. I can add that to my resume - three galleries, a coffee shop and now a personal art collection. Sigh.

To be or not...

2009-03-07T14:39:00.004-07:00

I'm struggling, now that I'm out of school, to come up with creative ideas for my photography. I take random photos, hoping that one will inspire me and give me some direction. But, it's also spring in Tucson and I have a hard time staying inside at my computer working on photographs that, so far, are uninspiring. So I've been working in my yard, pruning, hauling, digging, fertilizing and planting, while all around me the desert is beginning to bloom. It's a cliche I know - flower photographs, but here they are...and they make me happy.

Reflections

2008-09-30T16:03:00.008-07:00

I'm excited about the new image on my website called "Reflecting home on Bear Lake, Muskegon, Michigan." Long title, but I want to make sure that viewers realize that the image was not produced via Photoshop filter. I took this shot on black and white film in 2000 and I've always loved it, so I decided to digitize it so I could offer it on my site. It looks great in print but you gotta stand back from it to experience it fully. Reflecting

Memories

2008-09-04T14:20:00.010-07:00

I've added a couple of new galleries to my site entitled "memories." These are photos I shot while on vacation in Michigan of places that are meaningful to me.

I went to McGraft Park in Muskegon early one morning by myself, partly to get away from family and partly to have the chance to photograph something other than family. I hold McGraft Park close to my heart - I played softball for twelve years from my early twenties into my thirties and this park is where most of the games were played each summer. Softball may seem like a trivial thing to most but it meant the world to me at the time. I was good at it. A great batter and a greater pitcher. And playing softball meant spending a lot of time away from the tyrant who was my husband.

My daughter was at all the softball games from the time she was two months old and packed into a baby carrier sitting on top of a picnic table. Whichever teammates were not on the field would keep watch and every once in awhile her cry would cause my focus to drift from my catcher and the waiting batter to the sidelines. She was always fine - except maybe for the time the third baseman's 2-year old nephew bit her on the forehead.

McGraft Park was her favorite place to be when she was between three and four years old. She never really watched the games at that point - she was off playing on the swings and those funny little molded plastic animals on springs, and I would watch her from our bench. She especially liked that big green tortoise. All of the animals are gone or been replaced now, but the swings look like they're the originals. Swings

Walking around the field, kicking the dirt off the rubber and peering off across the playground - I could see it all again - the first time we beat the formidable (and previously unbeaten) Mill Inn, the first time I took a wallop under the chin from a bad hop (I still have the indent from it) and all the times I watched my little girl come running from the playground breathlessly interrupting my focus on the game to tell me all about it.

Reminds me...

2008-06-26T10:11:00.006-07:00

Added this photo
to my website.
Okay, maybe it's
not "art" per se,
but it reminds me
of my mother.

(see Link #2)

New Images

2008-06-10T10:19:00.003-07:00

I've added a few more images to my website, judyadavisphotography.com. In the gallery labeled Uncommon Common there is a new image entitled "Umbrellas." In "Casting Shadows" I've added "Desert Light," and there is an entirely new gallery of portraits I'm taking of a beautiful young woman.

Garden Madonna

2008-06-03T22:43:00.007-07:00

Today I dropped off my photograph that has been accepted for the "big ideas SMALL FRAMES" exhibition at Dinnerware Artspace in downtown Tucson. The artist reception is June 7th from 6-9pm and the show runs through July 19th. My piece is entitled Garden Madonna. It is a photograph of my Mom's statue of Mary that has been standing in her garden for as long as I can remember. She gave it to her mother in 1954 as a Mother's Day gift and brought it home in 1976 after her mother died. Now the Madonna is on my mom's grave site - she died last September 3rd. My dad wanted her to have it because it meant so much to her. My sister repainted it and although she did a very nice job, Mom's Madonna is just not the same. She's lost the texture that comes with age, the character and the beauty that only time can provide. The texture is still there in the photograph - I'm so glad I took that photograph. In the image, the Garden Madonna is still standing guard over my mom's hydrangeas and Mom is sitting in her chair at the kitchen table watching the goldfinches and the sparrows and, if we're lucky, the indigo bunting, fuss over the feeders.
Garden Madonna

New Link

2008-05-21T22:18:00.003-07:00

I've added a new link to a new gallery on my website. I call it Finer Details. It will be a collection of close-up images of the everyday minutia that makes up life, the stuff in the background that tells the real story. There are only three items in the gallery so far, but I will keep adding to it. I like it. On another note, today I got my first acceptance of a piece for a gallery show! It's so exciting! Maybe it's the beginning.

Uncommon Common

2008-05-18T16:59:00.002-07:00

I've added a new link to this blog that will take the reader
to a pretty cool photograph in a gallery I've titled Uncommon
Common. An uncommon perspective of a common view.

Working on my website

2008-05-10T09:06:00.003-07:00

I'm an introvert for the most part so marketing my photography business will be difficult for me. I would rather work on the website than get out and promote myself to real people. Ugh. But I love my website! I'm supposed to be working on a marketing plan for a class project. I get sidetracked.

Late

2008-05-09T00:30:00.002-07:00

After midnight. Still working on my photography website. I had a great start on it, then my computer came down with a nasty virus. Took me a good two and a half weeks to cure it and now it runs pretty darned slow. Then I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand. I'm right handed. Finally back online. Next week I have surgery on my left hand. I'm right handed. I should be ok. My website looks great! Focusing on adding my current stock of photographs and then I really need to get back to actually shooting. Probably after I recover from my second round of carpal tunnel surgery.

2007-08-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Red Rock State Park in Sedona, Az.

2007-05-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

Home through Time Final Video
My ongoing photography project, “Home in Time,” is motivated in great part by the beauty I feel is revealed in the textures created by the effects of time. But my interest in these houses goes beyond just the images themselves. I always wonder about, and have begun to search for, the stories hidden behind the curtains still hanging in a broken window and the cracked tiles in a bathroom and the peeling paint on an old white fence. These were the efforts of someone somewhere in time to create a home.

For me, the notion of home is intimately connected with family, and in taking photographs of old houses I tend to picture children and parents and grandparents living in these spaces that at one time were new and robust and maybe represented somebody’s dream home. I’ve created a video that is meant to symbolize that connection of family and home and the effects of time and aging on both.

I suspect that my video will have a greater emotional effect on viewers of the baby-boom generation than it will on twenty-somethings. Our parents are nearing the end of their lives and our children are making us the grandparents. The Circle of Life. It’s a romantic notion, but sometimes the reality sucks.

(Video below)

2007-05-02T16:32:00.001-07:00

2006-11-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

2006-10-01T21:23:00.000-07:00