Happy holidays from Santa and Pixel

Wishing everyone a very happy holiday!

2012: A Visual Recap

I’ve picked one photo from each month of 2012 to recap the year visually. Now here’s to 2013—hoping it is a year of immense creativity, creating more issues of Celebrate Home Magazine with my publishing partner Barbara Kelley, staying connected to family, nurturing friendships both near and far and old and new, growing my graphic design and photography business in fresh and challenging directions, getting back to painting with my friends (Cam, Dana and Cathy) in our one-painting-a-week resolution, hosting soirees, communing with nature and photographing more flowers and bugs (I can never get enough of that!), updating my garden with quirky and photogenic new plants, hitting the road in search of adventure (and fresh photographs), getting back to my painting (fine art, not walls), shooting more photos (and not just botanical), the wonderful opportunity to teach photography workshops in spring with artist Suzy Olsen at her villa in Tuscany, honing my writing craft, acquiring new skills and learning something new every day.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 7

Above the brown and white bedroom is the top floor, which houses the sleeping and lounge areas for P. Allen Smith’s nieces and nephews. A bright pink and white checkered runner welcomes you up to the sitting area (my apologies for that noisy image but it was all I got with my iPhone!). Across from the lounge are four twin beds and a full bath. Two dormer window nooks offer beautiful views of the Arkansas River Valley.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 6

One of the most inviting spots in P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home was the screened sleeping porch at the back of the house. In his introduction before the tour, he mentioned one of the designers wanted to add a fourth bed to the porch, but he nixed that idea, saying, “We don’t want it to look like a tuberculosis ward!” Below is a shot of the three beds in the sleeping porch, which is the top level of the two-level porch.

Below: This room also has a gorgeous copper bathtub (not a lot of privacy, obviously!) and Sue just had to try it out (yes, she is tiny and yes, the tub is huge).

Below: On the same floor in the front of the house was a guest bedroom with two beds with a crisp color palette of brown, beige and white. I think the two paintings of clouds above the beds might have been done by P. Allen Smith.

Below: Corner desk area

P. Allen Smith and Heidi Berry of the Berry Family of Nurseries

Before we toured P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home outside of Little Rock, Arkansas on December 7, we had the pleasure of meeting Mimi San Pedro (top photo, middle), chief operating and marketing officer for Hortus, Ltd., the multimedia marketing company that oversees the P. Allen Smith brand. She introduced us to Heidi Berry, of the Berry Family of Nurseries, who has teamed up with P. Allen Smith to offer a special holiday collection of hand-harvested, hand-tied wreaths, door swags, table runners and garlands.

Heidi explained to us how she met P. Allen and invited him to visit the Berry Family of Nurseries in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. She told us that their greenery boughs are harvested by hand from the lowest tree branches, which encourages trees to grow taller and stronger. No trees are cut down in the process. The products are made from Noble Fir, Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir. Natural elements such as juniper berries, pine cones, incense cedar, canella berries and white pine boughs adorn the designs.

I shot the image of P. Allen and Heidi in front of a candy cane decoration outside the “tractor barn” before we began the tour of the house. Below the photo is a video of Smith touring the nursery where the greenery is assembled.

Speaking of the tractor barn, click here to see a slide show of how Smith took a standard metal building and refaced it to look like an old wood barn. Very clever!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

iPhoneography: Saturdays are also good for cleaning between your toes!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

iPhoneography: Saturday afternoons R 4 sleeping…

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 5

One of my favorite highlights of the tour was P. Allen’s detached art studio with windows overlooking the gardens and French doors opening onto the lawn behind the screened porch. Sue dared me to paint something on the blank watercolor paper pad and I was so tempted. Now I wish I had (and signed it)! Although he professes to “just dabble,” he is a talented artist (something I didn’t know about him!). The large American vegetable paintings hanging throughout the house and lining two walls in the “dinner barn” are his work (photos to come).

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 4

This is the study/library area outside the master bedroom, sitting area, bedroom, desk/study and master bath. All photos taken with my iPhone.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 3

These shots are of the bottom level family room, guest bedroom, bath and back porch. All images shot with my iPhone!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 2

These shots were taken on the main floor of the house (middle floor), walking out from the kitchen/dining/sitting area onto the screened porch. The stairs lead down to the walkout basement level with a beautiful family room and another bedroom. Doors lead out to a patio and onto the lawn, flanked on either side by Smith’s detached art studio (one of my favorite highlights!) and an outdoor kitchen/prep building. The garden stretches out below this area, with a stunning view of the river and valley below. I’d love to come back in the spring to see the property when the gardens are in full bloom. All of these shots were done with my iPhone (amazing little thing)!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home at Moss Mountain Farm, Part 1

Last week I flew to Huntsville, AL to visit my friend Sue and her mother, Wanda. On Thursday we hit the road headed to Little Rock, AR to visit Sue’s Aunt Gay, whose late husband was former Arkansas Governor Frank White. The occasion? We were all signed up for the open house tour and luncheon at P. Allen Smith’s Greek-Revival-inspired estate located 30 minutes outside of Little Rock. The home sits on top of a ridge overlooking the Arkansas River Valley and is spectacular.

It was love at first sight for me and I shot hundreds of photos with my Nikon SLR, a Coolpix and my trusty iPhone (believe it or not, all of the images in the collage below were shot with just the iPhone). Because there were 90+ people meandering through the house, it was much easier to shoot with my phone than to use my pro stuff. I did get some shots with the other cameras and will share those in later postings.

The collage below shows the main room in the front of the house, plus the sitting room and dining table next to the gorgeous kitchen. I shot every little vignette I could, not wanting to miss even one tiny detail. Learn more about this beautiful property on P. Allen’s website here. Many more photos to come!

iPhoneography: Turtle Beach, Siesta Key, Florida

Shot in early November © Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

iPhoneography: Fleeing the crime scene

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

iPhoneography: Yes, I’m going to Carolina (Beach) in my mind….

Yippee! After owning my iPhone for eight months, I finally figured out how to download all 1,514 images I’ve shot from April until this week onto my MacBook Pro. Now I can finally do something with them other than post them immediately on Facebook!

This first collage consists of photos that I took of Michael and my friend Karen on Carolina Beach (love those donuts from Britt’s!). I had a lot of fun using Snapseed, Hipstamatic and Instagram on my first iPhoneography efforts. Special thanks to Barbara for letting us stay in her adorable condo overlooking the beach!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Simple times

Ah, I remember so well the days when I would “shoot with what I had” and not crave the latest photography gadget, expensive lighting, different backgrounds, etc. In high school and into college, I occasionally babysat the two sons of my favorite teacher in high school. This is her youngest son, Matthew. I started babysitting him when he was a newborn; I think he’s about four or five years old in this photo. Matthew, and his older brother, Marshall, were always great subjects for my camera and they took direction great (although I’m fairly certain bribery was needed!). I got this shot of little Matthew hanging over the arm of the couch, leaning into the light of a side table lamp. This was probably shot with Tri-X 400 film. I seem to recall making prints on some kind of warm-toned Ilford paper in a friend’s darkroom (hence the slight sepia tint to the image). Pretty simple set-up: 35mm camera (probably a Pentax), b&w film, no tripod, available light. Simple. Those were the days.

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.