Spend an afternoon creating your perfect sketchbook: choose the paper, choose the covers, do it yourself -just as you want it!
For many urban sketchers or watercolour artists, the search for the perfect sketchbook is ongoing. Sometimes the size is great, but the paper you want is not available in sketchbook format. Now there is an end to that!
Around the end of March 2017, the beginning of the northern hemisphere spring, I had a sudden urge for colours and to do it in an analogue way. I needed to paint. Throughout the years I had been collecting watercolour palettes, but never really committing any serious time to using them. This time it was different -I had to just put brush to paper and get going. And this is how GardeniaFair began the watercolours era.
I toured the Bötzow Brewery in early March 2013, with the inescapable feeling that I was capturing a moment that would not last long. The Brewery was bought by a an investor-benefactor, that is breathing new life into it. The Brewery, as I was seeing it, would not remain like that very long.
This has been one of Berlin´s darkest winters. The local meteorological office counted only around 80 hours of sun, around half of what is normal. This is a challenge for photographers who, like me, want to go out to take photos. Whenever there is the slightest ray of sun, even if it is a blue patch in the sky, we are out there, shooting with as much light as we can. What to do in times like these?
Continue reading Berlin photo blues: Tips for photographers in winter months
This website´s mission was originally to “liberate” many photos which had so far been pressed tight in countless pages of photo albums, suffered in the dark spaces of boxes full of Kodachrome slides or accumulated many gigabytes of space in several external hard drives.
It only needed a name to leap into existence…and here is the genesis to it.
Gardenias (or jasmines) are summer favourites of mine. They were the certain smell of many sunny summer afternoons. Two images come to mind -of times when I remember smelling gardenias: walking down narrow alleys in Rome, with brick alls covered in these tiny flowers, steps down from the residence of the President, and walking past street flower vendors at a train station in Buenos Aires -where dozens of bundles of gardenias pile up on tables, waiting for busy passers by to take them home.
Another favourite is the film “Sabrina” , both Billy Wilder´s 1954 version starring Audrey Hepburn and Sydney Pollack´s 1995 remake with Harrison Ford. One of the characters refers to Jon Milton´s song of 1634 which starts with “Sabrina Fair” .
Two random memories. Connected by a random anagram that represents the eyes beyond the camera in this website. All relevant letters are there, it has an airy, evocative sound to it. Welcome to Gardenia Fair!
Thanks for visiting -hope you enjoy the photos.
