Peg Owens (In the window taking her own photo!)
Peg Owens met NestingCards’ founder in the early 2000s in Idaho. They worked together to expand film and television productions in the state. When approached in 2019 about providing a set of seven photos for NestingCards, Peg enthusiastically joined and provided multiple sets-of-seven. Learn more about Peg:
What brought you to your art-form, photography?
At sixteen, I attended some art classes in the New Orleans French Quarter. (My daughter now has a fairly nice charcoal still life I drew then. But, being pathologically shy and still a teen, I did not feel very good at it. Then, during my last year of college to achieve a sociology degree, I took a photography class and realized I had found my replacement for drawing. I researched magazines for a new school and moved to Santa Barbara, California to start at Brooks Institute of Photography. Decades and decades later, I now have the tools to render photographs into art through computer algorithms. Now, I am back to drawing, on a computer, based on my own photographs. I call it Impressionist Photography.
What keeps you inspired to create fine art?
It is highly seasonal and at special times of day for me. Except for the occasional beautiful winter shot, I emerge in spring to begin gardening and traveling and photographing through fall. I am attracted to culture, flowers/nature, landscapes and anything witty or charming. Sunrises draw me out on an early morning, when I can have the roads to myself and play a kind of peek-a-boo with the sun. Sunsets tend to have people out and about but sunrises are serene, quiet and brisk.
What, if any, formal education do you have to “be an artist”?
Bachelor of Arts, Photography, with an advertising illustration specialty; Brooks Institute of Photography
How have you come to your favorite media?
Without realizing it years ago, it appears I was waiting for computer technology to catch up with what I wanted to do. Everyone can use Prisma on the iPhone, but I often employ three different software programs with multiple filter algorithms to achieve what I want, often painstakingly slowly.
When do you feel MOST creative?
Two ways: either catching a wonderful sunrise landscape or three or sitting on a snowy winter day, deep in algorithmic play.
WHERE do you feel creatively inspired?
On the road, seeing new landscapes and interesting things. “On the road again, I just can’t wait to be on the road again.”
What happens to the work you create that others of us might never see?
In the days of film rolls of 36 frames, I would feel successful if I achieved only one or two good ones from a shoot. With digital, I can shoot a lot more at no cost and even delete right in the camera. I tend to try to capture images in both a vertical and horizontal format, cognizant of varying potential commercial uses. In recent times, I have dabbled with HDR—layering 2-3 ‘identical’ shots together to marry the pixels for greater clarity. Therefore, my library of images amounts to more than 30,000. As for the best, probably 1/6 of that number are my bests. I can often return from a trip with more than a dozen or twenty favorites from my subject matter, more if atmospheric conditions (‘Clouds of Michaelangelo’) are with me.
Another note:
Have a listen to Joni Mitchell’s Refuge of the Roads on YouTube. Music is my travel partner and this song is my anthem of sorts and has the lyric: “These are the clouds of Michaelangelo, muscular with Gods and sungold.” It expresses some of my own personal drives with being too serious about life and battling depression. Another lyric at the end about perspective grabs me, too. “In a highway service station, over the month of June, was a photograph of the Earth taken coming back from the Moon. And you couldn’t see a city on that marble bowling ball, or a forest or a highway, or me, here, least of all.”
Beautiful song. Joni designed or drew her own album covers. I used to think I could create great album or book covers but never had the chance or the connections with artists. Closest I got was getting hired by the lighting company to photograph a Cher concert for them. No contact with Cher, of course. Instead, decades later, I have created NestingCards.
For more about Peg’s amazing background: LuckyStudio 13 (vimeo.com)
NestingCards is delighted to have Peg on the team.
Photo note: French Quarter Impressions by Peg Owens for NestingCards®.
NestingCards videos here: Welcome to NestingCards – YouTube
Note: Peg Owens shot the videos for NestingCards’ YouTube channel.
Nesting shares ideas for using NestingCards® and tips for creating keepsake memories on these cards which are printed with original images and paintings on fine papers. The written word shares joy, creates memories, and can envelope a sense of home! Enjoy browsing and shopping www.NestingCards.com for fun, for gifts, and for joy-spreading possibilities.
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Jana Kemp
