Tammy contacted me about having this nice photo of her dog, left and her boss’s dog, right, put onto canvas. It was for his 58th birthday and she wanted to give him something unique as a present. The photo was enhanced to bring out the colour and contrast, given a black border then printed out as an A3 size canvas print and then mounted. For a birthday present, its hard to beat personal photo put onto canvas!

More hockey action down at the Whangarei hockey stadium. This week is collegiate girls hockey Monday nights. Here two High Schools - the most distant competitors from each other - Kerikeri High School vs Otamatea. Kerikeri won 1-0, but put huge pressure on Otamatea’s defence. Otamatea’s goalie had a blinder, pulling off many great saves - like the photo above.

Rob from Creative Media Works in Wellington contacted me about having two canvas prints of this mountain panorama scene. Rob specified dimensions of 1000mm x 300mm and wanted them to be of the best quality for his client. The image was couriered to me by CD to ensure image quality.

The images were printed onto canvas, coated, then mounted onto my custom made Poplar timber/MDF board frame. With the process I use, the canvas prints are edge glued to the board then trimmed at the corners. This leaves a very clean edge. However, a very fine white line of the canvas edge is still visible. This is hand touched up with paint with a colour matching the rest of the image as close as possible. This leaves a nice clean edged canvas print.

Rob contacted me when the prints arrived in Wellington:”I just got the prints delivered ..Absolutely awesome …. that’s a really great job. The way you’ve framed the print is the best I’ve ever seen - extremely professional. Bargain really aye.”

I’ve taken a sequence of photos showing most of the steps involved with making a mounted canvas print. Rob has kindly given me permission to use his image. When I get some spare time I’ll add it to my canvas printing section.

More canvas printing of giclee art reproductions. Bev Taylor, whom had done a print for the first time with the farm yard animal scene, liked his reprint so much he ordered copies to be made of four more of his original artworks. Here are two painted scenes he wants printed and mounted as well as doing straight canvas prints.

Canvas giclee reproduction prints are a great way of obtaining a great art work for a smaller price than the original artwork - plus giving the artist more exposure of his works.

Mike came to see me about having a wide canvas mounted panorama print made of this beach scene. It was taken on the Katikati Peninsula in the Far North, Northland, New Zealand. Mike and friends have a bach near where this is taken and wanted something to hang on a wall at the bach.

Mike had taken a sequence of images from his point and shoot camera and stitched them together himself. They formed a canvas print measuring 1500mm x 180mm and looked stunning. The great thing with doing my own canvas prints and mounting I can make all sorts of sizes. Feel free to enquire about any odd ball sizes you might have.

The New Zealand National U21 Hockey Tournament concluded on Saturday 9th May. Runners up in the mens’ were Canterbury 4th, Auckland 3rd. In the women’s Canterbury took 3rd, Midlands 4th.

In the men’s final Capital beat Northern 4-0, while in the women’s Northern beat Auckland 4-2. Here you can see the two winning sides with their trophies and medals.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to take photos of all the games or all the teams, time table constraints and running my own business prevented this. Otherwise there’s a heap of photos to look at for everyone to enjoy. Back to the domestic competitions!

Ellen from Tauranga emailed me enquiring about having a canvas print made from the scan of a 35mm negative. I told Ellen this wouldn’t be a problem, I’d be happy to help her. Ellen mailed the negative along with instructions where the canvas should be divided into.

It was a photo they’d taken while walking the Abel Tasman Track, South Island, New Zealand, and was around 6am while they were crossing the Awaroa Inlet at low tide.

The canvas was to be divided into a three piece print or triptych as they are known. I made a few tweaks to the image, working out where the divides would be, as shown by the white lines. The image was divided into one 300mm x 400mm centre, and two 200mm x 400mm sides, total width of 700mm. Ellen was thrilled with the final result and emailed back:

“I was looking around for some art work to put on the new office wall. Then decided that maybe one of my snapshots - although only a snapshot - might look just as good as some-one else’s photo and have a bit of meaning - a great summer holiday - our first family tramping experience. You did a great job putting the photo round the edges and making an amateur photo look great. Thank you.”

This week the national U21 hockey tournament is under way in Whangarei, Northland. The tournament comprises regional mens and womens teams from around the country showing the best the country has to offer in talent.

So I’ve been popping around from time to time taking photos when I can. Here’s some action from the last couple of days - a heap of field hockey photos now online. The top photo is ex Northland player Charlotte Harrison, NZ Women Black Stick member, doing a reverse shot from which she scored a goal. The 2nd image is action from today where top teams Auckland and Northern played a hard fought game. Northern eventually won 4-3

Terry Young called to see me about have some slides scanned, printed and copied to disc. They were images he took while serving in the Vietnam war 1968 for the New Zealand Army. Terry was situated at the ANZAC army base in the Phuoc Tuy province. Part of his work detail was serving sentry duty at the New Zealand Embassy in Saigon. A close up shows detail of the car in the background of the image with number plate details

Terry was with the 161 Battery Artillery. He’s in the top left image posing on the sandbags, with shots of his mates and military equipment. Another closeup shows the watch on the soldier as they fire a mortar during an exercise. It’s 11.40am, nearly time for lunch!

I made a few changes to the site - just a few tweaks to code here and there, switched around photos on the front page, looking for minor errors hidden away. Now giving some thought to extending the canvas print section. As always it’s not the technical side adding pages, but working on the wording….