Artist Spotlight - Kelsey Cain Photography

For several years now when I have visited the State Fair of Texas, one of the vendors I have enjoyed stopping by and visiting with and looking at his wonderful photography has been Kelsey Cain. He travels extensively to capture amazing images of nature, predominantly from the western U.S. Wolves, cougars and mustangs are just some of his subjects. Kelsey is very personable and has been gracious to share some insights into the flow of his year, from his travels to the production of new prints.

While many of his subjects are large and dangerous, one small critter that is fun to see in his images is the pika. Tiny furballs that live at very high elevations, pikas don't hibernate so they make the most of the summer growing season and gather bundles of grasses, flowers and other vegetation that they stash away as hay for the winter. I learned to appreciate Kelsey's pika images even more when I was lucky enough to spot at least one that came and went from a rocky outcrop on Grand Mesa in western Colorado. The little critters are shy and very quick. We saw one bring back a bundle of greens twice but neither shot was what I was hoping for to add to my photographic art offerings. I am sharing one of them in this post however so you can get a feel for their habitat. I could have hung out there for hours in hopes of getting some better shots but I didn't think that would be fair to ask of the rest of the group that had driven up to the top of the mesa to explore it. I also might have missed the marmots that I did get some shots of that have been added to my body of work.

So this year when I visited Kelsey's booth, I appreciated his pika photos even more than before. Kelsey offers framed larger prints as well as smaller matted ones. He had a matted print of my favorite, a pika perched on a rock with a bundle of ferns in its mouth that I had to take home with me. I have finally found a frame that complements the image and my room as you can see in the second image in this post. Stop by Kelsey's booth next time you are at the TX State Fair.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's 2014 Photo Contest

This year the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Photo Contest changed up its entry categories a bit and added a rule that you could enter a maximum of eight photos per person across whatever categories you entered. There was a new category, Birds and Butterflies with Native Wildflowers and Plants, that really appealed to me because of the nature shots that I tend to take as a starting point for my photographic art images. I found three images with birds and five images containing butterflies that I decided to enter this year. (You can click on the photos below to see larger images or go directly to my images on the photo contest page for voting by clicking here or to each individual photo's voting pages by clicking the title under each photo. When you are on those pages, if you click the photo to the left of the title, a much larger image eventually comes up.)

Female Cardinal on Bald Cypress------Western Kingbird on Pecan-------------Field Sparrow on Elm-----

---------------------Skipper on Pickerel Rush-----Gray Hairstreak on Late-Flowering Boneset---------------

---Fiery Skipper on Frog Fruit---Variegated Fritillary on Butterflyweed----Question Mark on Lantana---

Unless something manages to go viral, I don't expect to top the charts on the public voting, however it would still be very useful to me for developing future photographic art images to know which of these photos people like the best, so if you have the time please vote for your favorite(s). You may vote once per day (24 hour period) for whatever photo you like through May 9, 2014 (even if it isn't mine). If you really like an image but would prefer not to vote, please leave me a comment about the one(s) you like. The categories are judged privately, independent of the public voting.