Homosassa Springs, A Great Road-trip for Photographers

As I type this blog entry I’m off of “Commercial Way” on my journey back toward Tampa, and Clearwater. Today, I ventured from my hometown an hour or two to The Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. Without further explanation, you and the rest of my readers may envision a recreational park? A forest preserve perhaps? In fact, Homosassa Springs is a working zoo and a wildlife rehabilitation center.

I arrived at the visitors center this morning, a spacious building with children’s exhibits, baked goods, a gift shop and a sheltered boat dock. Passenger ferries arrive to and from the center on the half hour and take visitors on smooth ride down Pepper Creek to The State Park. The ferry captain entertained the youngsters with origami while we waited for boarding, then offered us a narrative of the local plants and wildlife we glimpsed on the short trip. Visitor's who prefer a quicker means of transit may board the trams to and from The Park. I assure you though, the boat trip is worth your time. I glimpsed gators, turtles and nesting osprey on the thirty minute transit.

We arrived at the State Park and disembarked in time for an introduction to Lu, the African hippopotamus. I understand he was retired as a mascot for Union Carbide and awarded honorary citizenship, in 1991, by Governor Lawton Chiles. This legal gesture assures that, though he is not a Florida native, he may live out his days peacefully, with the local wildlife of the zoo. The remainder of the park is a network of hiking paths that follow the Homosassa River, leading visitors to open-air enclosures for manatees, black bears, bobcats, white-tailed deer, American alligators, American crocodiles, river otters, and a variety of native water birds and birds of prey.

Unlike our local zoo, The Park is not dense with vacationers so it offers a variety of fine opportunities for photographers, like myself, to get unobstructed shots of the wildlife. At the time I visited Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park the fees were $13 for adults, $5 for children. I recommend it to all of my artistic friends. The Park is located at 4150 S Suncoast Blvd, Homosassa Springs, Florida. Visit their website at http://www.floridastateparks.org/homosassasprings/default.cfm.

 Thanks for reading!

(2 C More art go to www.themindscapeartfoundry.com or www.artoflylepolyak.com)

"Filling Station" Places in Top Three

On June second The Pinellas Park Art Society opened its Annual Photo Contest at Park Station with the results of the judging announced at the gathering on the eleventh of June. The Exhibit was open to submissions not only from Art Society Memebers but also photographers throughout Pinellas County and Tampa Bay. Submissions were permitted in three categories including standard (color) photography, digitally enhanced photographs and black and whites. When the results were announced I was enjoying the sights of Historic Saint Augustine with my family and my trusty camera and, as luck would have, while I was away, I placed in the top three for the black and white category. Second prize in black and white went to "Filling Station," a custom-sized monochrome print of three model-T's refuling at Largo's Heritage Village. It's a great honor and the same photograph will soon appear at Carrollwood Cultural Center's September Art Exhibit. See you there?

(2 C More Art go to www.artoflylepolyak or www.themindscapeartfoundry.com)



Carrollwood Cultural Center B&W Exhibit Draws a Crowd

It's one of those events that remains in your memory for years to come as a "remember when..." story. The day before my road trip to Saint Augustine on the other coast, I partook of the enjoyment of meeting friends, patrons and strangers with a shared interest in the arts. I'm looking out a window now at a gray sky and listening to the roar of rain and the distant tinny-sound of thunder as I type.

Let the weather app on my laptop serve as the proof. As I type this article it is pouring in Carrollwood, however, despite the weather, a plethora of guests is present at the Carrollwood Cultural Center, observing a newly installed collection of artwork. The rain falling outside is doing little to impact the high spirits of the guests.

The ride into Tampa from Clearwater was well worth it to see four of my works beside so many other inspired pieces. The theme of this show is Black and White, but it encompasses familiar and no-so-familiar genres - Sketch, Painting, Pastel, Scratchboard, Sculpture and Metalwork, to name a few. Regularly used for plays and recitals the center is tonight hosting a friendly gathering of artists discussing the ways and means they choose to produce their masterpieces.

My favorite piece in the show displays the brilliance of imagination - a full sized bust of a horse amassed like a puzzle of conjoining bits of scrap metal. Hooks, pulleys, cogs and bars, the barrel of a rifle, some other components who original purpose I can only speculate, but joined harmoniously into a unified whole. Other works will leave you puzzling and asking yourself, "I wonder how they thought of that?"

The exhibit will be on display from now until the second of July, so if you are in the area please stop in at Carrollwood Cultural Center to view the collection. The majority of the Black and White artwork is available for sale. with artists contact info supplied on the posted title cards. Carorollwood Cultural Center is located at 4537 Lowell Road Tampa, FL 33618. They have a loaded schedule of events throughout the year which you can browse at their website www.carrollwoodcenter.org, or you can call their office at (813) 269-1310.

Below are a few snapshots from the reception.

Thanks for reading!

Lyle Polyak

(2 C more art go to www.themindscapeartfoundry.com or www.artoflylepolyak.com)

Bok Tower Gardens and Pinewood Estate

This weekend gave rise to yet another road trip in the name of photography. The destination was Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales Florida. Add this to your list of must sees if you are an appreciator of nature, architecture or music. The gardens encompass a full 50 acres of high ground surrounded on all sides by local, still-active orchards.

Along the paths beautiful native plants meander alongside planted blooms and exotic orchids and bamboo higher than most homes. Look over the outcropping as you climb up the hillside and you'll get an astonishing view of the countryside and the groves below that spans for miles. Situated within the gardens is Pinewood Estate, a 1930s Mediterranean-style hermitage, with all the sights and beauty of a story tale mansion. Designed as the retreat of C. Austin Buck, The estate has all the comforts imaginable for a writer or artist who enjoys his privacy. Follow the tranquil path for a way and you arrive at Window by the Pond. A small wooden enclosure where silence is a virtue. Within this edifice a giant picture window looks out across the still waters of a salt marsh where cardinals, grackles, wading birds and ospreys perch and feed not ten away. Then at the precipice you arrive at the cornerstone of the Gardens, a 205-foot art Gothic Tower with a collection of 60 bells. The structure was commissioned by Edward Bok, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and world peace advocate, and designed by architect Milton B Medary and sculptor Lee Lawrie. Completed on February 1, 1929, bell concerts still commence daily at 1:00 and 3:00PM

Bok Tower Gardens is open 365 days a year from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with last admission at 5 p.m. General admission is $12 for adults and $3 for children and admission to Pinewood Estate is $6 for adults and $5 for children. Visit the Garden's and bring your camera as you can see, photo opportunities abound. Many of the following will soon be added to the gallery and appear on exhibit shortly.

As usual, thanks for reading,
L Polyak, Wildlife Photographer and Artist

(2 C More art go to www.themindscapeartfoundry.com or www.artoflylepolyak.com)

"Givin' you the bird." (No, no. Not that way.)

My classes in Adobe Photoshop continue with lessons in clipping masks and artistic manipulation of photos. It's to my benefit that my homework offers me additional prints to add to my gallery online. The classes I'm taking at Saint Petersburg College are less lectures than real-world exercises that graphic artists would accomplish for design corporations and advertisement industries worldwide. Last Thursday, I edited a restaurant ad, using multiple images, to create a puppy dreaming of chicken curry, and utilized a few vacation photos, with clipping masks, to make a convincing Hawaiian postcard.
Later, I applied these same methods to a few images of mine. On my latest trip to Walter Fuller Park I captured a very nice image of a juvenile ibis, a common seabird in my area that has a thin, curved peak. While the image of the bird was impressive and crisp, the surrounding mud flats, murky waters and lichens combined into palate of nauseating hues. Well, I did manage to apply a clipping mask to Mister Ibis and remove him from his surroundings. and then I located a simple snapshot from Fort Desoto Beach to apply behind him. After a bit of tweaking, and multiple Photoshop layers, Mister Ibis developed a blurred shadow, some selective color fading and Gaussian blur to suggest that he was on that beach, in the sun, all the while.

Thanks for reading!

(2 C More Art go to www.artoflylepolyak.com or www.themindscapeartfoundry.com)

Mission Accomplished

I've really been getting onto Adobe Photoshop quite a bit these past few weeks. My official Photoshop training starts this week, but I love to experiment to see what tools do what. Let me tell you about the artwork below, which will appear for the month of April at Park Station. This is my first experiment with Photoshop CS5...

The Goal: Use a disposable photo and a pencil sketch to create a fresh "pseudo-real" artwork.

The Photo: This image was taken during a fall festival at Heritage Village. The old train station was one of the few buildings not being used for reenactments and the abandoned structure urged me to capture it's image. With little action, the old platform was not a gallery-worthy shot but has been a great reference for wood grain and trees.

The Sketch: Originally a pencil sketch of a young painter with windswept hair, the sketch became the foundation of a self-contained figure who meshed nicely with the perspective of the old train station.

Step one - The original pencil sketch was scanned into my PC and loaded in Photoshop. A transparent over-layer was applied and used to draw the outlines with the pen tool.

Step two - Editing. removing the original, edits were made to the outline. The flowing hair didn't look realistic and was replaced by a shorter sporty cut. The curvature of the legs and arms was re-done to give a more appealing image.

Step three - Base colors were added and then given highlights and low-lights with the airbrush tool. Multiple texture filters were added to the clothing to create a denim texture and ripples.

Step four - Using the train station photo as a guide a "high pass" layer was created and used to generate an outline of the scene. Then a slightly brighter color scheme was used along with the watercolor filter to generate a new background.

Step five - A small sketch of an easel was found and used with another photograph with good wood-grains to generate an easel for our painter. The same watercolor filter was applied to mesh it with the background. Fan brushes were drawn in manually.

Step six - After a Gaussian blur was applied to the edges of each figure the multiple layers were re sized, merged and given drop shadows to create a final image.

Conclusion: The end product is meant to flow from the caricature of the painter, through the easel, to the pseudo-reality of the watercolor train station in a manner that compliments the whole work. This is meant to suggest that the image on the painter's canvas is the watercolor we see as a backdrop.   

Art Auction to Benefit Adoptable Pets

If you've visited my website, I hope my love of animals was more than obvious. The candid expressions of our furry, feathery and scaly brothers and sisters is not only a foundation for superb art, it is also food for thought. So I'd like to take a moment to tell you about an upcoming fundraiser in support of a local organization which is dedicated to caring for our areas lost and injured pets.

On May 12th, Pet Pal’s Animal Shelter will host its 10th Annual Puppy Love Fundraiser at the downtown St. Petersburg Hilton. This event will provide dinner, live music, a full cash bar, live and silent auctions, 50/50 raffles and a doggie kissing booth. I've already submitted a new 16x20 Gallery wrap to the art auction and I hope my friends in the artistic community might see fit to join me.

If you would like to partake of the festivities, tickets are $60 in advance ($550 for a table of ten) and can be purchased by calling Pet Pal Animal Shelter (727) 328-7738. Proceeds from this event provide much needed funds for the care and recuperation of our animals. Likewise, if you would like to contribute artwork or other actionable items please call the above number to arrange a drop off.

Learn more about the Shelter at http://www.petpalanimalshelter.com/

Thanks for reading!

(2 C More art go to www.artoflylepolyak.com or www.themindscapeartfoundry.com)