{"id":326,"date":"2012-02-06T03:08:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T03:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/?p=326"},"modified":"2013-04-24T23:55:38","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T23:55:38","slug":"january-week-5-mustard-in-the-vineyards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"January week 5 – Mustard in the Vineyards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the opening reception<\/a> for two artists at A Woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Eye Gallery Annex.\u00c2\u00a0 The room was vibrant with watercolors, acrylics, color pencil and art stix in swirls, lines, and imagination captured in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Themes and Variations.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 While people were sipping wine and discussing texture and techniques, I overheard this question:\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How long did it take you to create this piece.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember if the answer was in hours or days.\u00c2\u00a0 But unfortunately it seemed that the inquisitor was trying to calculate the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153per hour\u00e2\u20ac\u009d price of the piece.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wish people would ask that of one of my images especially if they feel the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153price tag\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is too steep.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, this vineyard shot took no less than 10 hours to create.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 After all I had to get to the location specifically with this or a similar image in mind.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I need to go back several times for the conditions to be right which might mean it took me weeks!\u00c2\u00a0 Then there is the post processing and printing time.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But those of you who are photographers already know all this. Seldom is an image produced by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153happenstance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or just jumping out of the car on your way somewhere else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So here we are in Napa Valley where January and February welcome the yellows of the wild mustard (planted) among the vineyards.\u00c2\u00a0 In addition to it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beauty it does serve a practical purpose.\u00c2\u00a0 It is planted to provide habitat for birds that will eat specific bugs and worms (nematodes) that attack the vines. Also the mustard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s root system helps open up the soil to allow it to better receive water and nutrients.\u00c2\u00a0 The mustard once plowed under also provides \u00e2\u20ac\u0153food\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for the vines.<\/p>\n

For me the mustard provides oceans of yellow as subject or background color. The vineyards at Leapfrog Winery are particularly bountiful right now.\u00c2\u00a0 With late afternoon sun the naked vines seem to emerge from the flowing yellow much like palm kelp at low tide.\u00c2\u00a0 Lots of depth of field captures merging lines of the rows of vines and the yellow pathways between them.<\/p>\n

Another fun subject in the winter vineyard is the left over curls of the vine tentacles and the few dried up clusters of what was once voluptuous merlot-to-be. Using a long lens (400mm) with a shallow depth of field (f\/6.3) will isolate a subject and cause the mustard field behind to become one sheet of yellow.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Other subjects at this time of year are fun to play with:\u00c2\u00a0 old fences covered with moss and lichen, vines with a few old leaves still clinging to them,\u00c2\u00a0 lines and curves in the fields and winery buildings, cows under silhouetted oak trees, and empty glasses (to mention just a few)<\/p>\n

Myth says the mustard was planted by missionaries dropping mustard seeds, so on the next years\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 journey when the path was overgrown with grass and vegetation the yellow of the mustard would mark the way.\u00c2\u00a0 Each mission is planted about one day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s walk from the other.<\/p>\n

So how long did it take to capture these images?\u00c2\u00a0 Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just say, enough time to create a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153priceless piece of art!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the opening reception for two artists at A Woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Eye Gallery Annex.\u00c2\u00a0 The room was vibrant with watercolors, acrylics, color pencil and art stix in swirls, lines, and imagination captured in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Themes and Variations.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 While people were sipping … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hkEw-5g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stacy.awegallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}