Bev Taylor called to enquire about having one of his art works printed onto canvas. I told him that I could indeed do it and explained some of the options available- ie just making a giclee canvas reproduction print or having it mounted on a frame as well. Bev liked what he heard so took a one hour drive from Kaiwaka to see me. I showed Bev some of my previous canvas prints and some of the gliclees I had done for other customers.

Bev liked my work so showed me his original painting of this wonderful farm yard scene of cattle and chickens staring at each other. He also had a slide image of the painiting, professionally taken a few years previously. The slide was scanned while Bev was here. We colour corrected the image on the screen until we had it looking as similar as possible to the original. I suggested to Bev I make a small canvas print proof with coating to make sure he liked the final result. I mailed the proof to Bev a few days later, with Bev calling me to say he liked it and go ahead with the final print.

The canvas was printed to be mounted onto a 710mm x 610mm frame. The final image will have a picture frame mounted around it to produce this stunning farm yard scene. Bev picked up the giclee today loving what he saw and has now left another 4 images to be prepared for printing. This image reproduction is for further sale. You can contact me or call Bev Taylor on 09 431 2031

Shelley called me about having the woman from this photo removed. The photo was of a couple and their children taken over 10 years ago. Since then the man and his wife had split up. Shelley thought the photo of just the father and 2 kids would make a great gift. The hardest part of doing these sorts of jobs is making the changes look seamless, a person should be able to look at the photo and not notice anything out of the ordinary.

The difficult part of this one was redoing the man’s face where his wife had previously been leaning against. This was rebuilt along with the shirt. The boy was shifted over with shadow detail added. The man’s fingers had to be fixed where he had been holding his wife’s hand. The hand holding the boy on the back was lowered slightly to reflect the boy was closer to his father. Finally the background was added in to fill in where the boy had been previously. All in all a very difficult job to get exactly right, but Shelley thought the final result looked great. It was printed to a 500mm x 600mm size.

More action over the weekend in the Northland premier men’s grade. Springfield, my new club, took on Bream Bay, my old club. A hard fought match by Springfield eventually dominated to win 6-3. Looks like I’m filling in for the seniors this weekend so I’ll be run ragged!

Update Springfield vs Mangapai game It turned out to be a hard fought game, three strokes being awarded, with myself getting a black eye from a hockey ball after doing a silly tackle. Nothing too bad though - them’s the breaks!. We won 3-2

Here’s a photo of the Bream Bay boys defending a penalty corner.

Ann saw me about having this photo restored and altered. It had started to suffer from silvering around the edges and was looking a bit tattered. The picture is of her father’s speed boat, used back in the 60s by his family. Ann wanted just a picure of the boat, so asked me to remove the lady and the water skis. The silvering was fixed, the woman/skis removed, background added in place, and the photo turned back to black and white.

Justine came to see me on the recommendation of one her friends about getting a couple of canvas prints made for her husband’s 50th birthday. Justine had two photos taken of her husband back in the late 70’s. This one shows him leaping off his ute! The photo had suffered from degradation of coupling agents, chemicals used in the process of developing the orginal photo. This has caused the reddening of the photo and will get worse as time goes by.

I removed the colour cast, enhanced the colouring to a more natural tone and removed all the marks and scratches. The original picture measured 85mm x 90mm but I was able to enlarge it make up a 400mm x 400mm square gallery wrapped canvas print. Justine was thrilled with the results and will happily present them to her husband on the big day.

Lynette came to me with this wedding photo to be put onto canvas. It’s a picture of her daughter and new husband. This was originally taken on a film camera - this particular photographer still shooting with film. Using the Nikon 9000 negative/slide scanner, the 35mm negative was scanned at the highest resolution of 4000dpi. The photo was then printed onto my Breathing Color Chromata canvas, coated and gallery wrapped to produce a stunning 760mm x 440mm photo. This image shows the border where the canvas print wraps around the frame.

Lynette called me back to say her daughter loved the canvas print and it’ll take pride of place in her house.

During Easter the New Zealand U21 Women Junior Black Sticks played an invitation Northland Women’s team in preparation for the Junior World Cup held in Boston USA, August this year. 6 Northland players made the side - a great credit to a small province being the breeding ground for great representative players. Here, ex Northland player Ella Gunson sets up an attack for her team. The U21 team won 4-1

The Northland hockey season is well on the way. Whenever I get the chance I’ll be taking pictures from various games and grades. Here’s a picture from last weekend’s premier womans’ games of Maungakaramea vs Hikurangi. This picture shows striker Dene Cheeseman scoring a goal for Hikurangi. Hikurangi won 5-2.

The last few weeks have been busy printing and making up canvas prints for customers. The biggest job among them has been a project I did for Mike involving nine floral canvas images. Mike came to see me about having the above photo and others put onto canvas for display in a buisness located in Whangarei. He wanted 5 floral canvas prints 400mm x 400mm square, a single rectangular one 400mm x 880mm and this large triptych. Each frame measured 500mm x 800mm, giving a combined width of 1500mm.

As with all triptych images, great care must be taken to ensure they are split so that if joined together they form one whole complete image. In the above photo, while the flower petals may look slightly out of alignment, when joined together they form a very close fit. Mike was very pleased with the results and I’m sure the prints will take pride of place in the office rooms.

The Crams came to see me about having a canvas print made of a tree that had been struck by lightning on their farm 15 years ago. They had seen a triptych (pronounced “trip-tick”) of a tree I had done for myself and thought their own one would look great. Triptych canvas prints are divided into three pieces, normally with the centre piece being the bigger of the three and having greater emphasis.

The image was scanned from a 35mm negative using the Nikon 9000 negative and slide scanner. This produced high resolution photo that was then turned to black and white and printed on canvas, then mounted on three frames measuring a total of 900mm x 600mm and producing a stunning image.