Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

Australian landscape photography

Landscape photograph of a lone tree standing on a hillside set against the brilliant blue sky of country Western Australia.

Art prints and gifts featuring this photograph are available for sale in the following places;

Art By Michelle Etsy shop – signed and custom prints options for sale

Redbubble Photography Shop Gift cards, matted, laminated, canvas and framed art prints for sale

Zazzle Art Shop Posters, ornaments, t-shirts, bags, posters, coffee mugs, canvas prints magnets, shoes, photo cards for sale

I can also be found on:

TWITTER

FACEBOOK – My Artwork

FACEBOOK – My Photography

SOUTH WEST PHOTOGRAPHY – my photography website

Thanks for visiting my blog  and sharing my art and photography with your family and friends!

x Michelle

Cape Naturaliste Coastal Landscape © South West Photography

Cape Naturaliste Coastal Landscape © South West Photography

Cape Naturaliste Coastal Landscape © South West Photography

Cape Naturaliste Coastal Landscape © South West Photography

Cape Naturaliste Coastal Landscape © South West Photography

Yallingup Waves © South West Photography

Yallingup South West Coast © South West Photography

Limited Christmas Pet Portraits Commissions are still available, but closing dates fro guaranteed Christmas delivery are just around the corner !

Commission your own Pet Portrait Painting by Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

FACEBOOK: Michelle Wrighton Artist

TWITTER: artistMichelleW

SOUTH WEST PHOTOGRAPHY: Portraits, Events, Landscapes and Photographic Art

SHOP CUSTOMIZED ART PRINTS, T-SHIRTS & GIFTS: Zazzle

SHOP CARDS, MATTED, LAMINATED AND FRAMED ART PRINTS: Redbubble

I can’t help myself, I take thousands of photographs of everything around me, both for reference material for my artwork and because my camera is just another medium to create art.  I don’t always have time to go through all my photos and select my favorites to display, but the other day I realized that my photography galleries were very outdated and thought I had better add some new ones.  This is just a few of the new additions, the rest rest can be seen in the Landscape and Animal& Wildlife Photography Galleries.  These photos were all taken within a short distance of my home, except the Tawny Frogmouth which was found a little further south.  Enjoy!

Harvest Landscape © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Sunset Silhouette © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Long Shadows © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Dark Sky © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Up Close and Personal - Tawny Frogmouth © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Solar was another beautiful dog that I had the pleasure of photographing several years ago.  Sadly, he is no longer with us, but I hope his Siberian Husky spirit still shines through in his pet portrait painting.  Before I started Solar’s portrait, I knew that I wanted to put him in a setting suitable for his breed.  I only wanted the background to be a subtle suggestion rather than a highly detailed landscape, so I avoided using any reference images to make sure I wouldn’t keep fiddling and adding more detail!  I’m quite pleased with how this turned out, I think it portrays his bright, happy personality quite well.

Siberian Husky Pet Portrait Painting by Michelle Wrighton

Dog Breed Info: The Siberian Husky has been a pure bred dog for centuries, originally developed by the Chukchi people of north eastern Asia as a sled dog. The breed became popular as endurance sled dgos after 1909, when a large number of Chukchi dogs were taken to Alaska to compete in the long-distance All-Alaska Sweepstakes races.

The Siberian Husky has a lovely affectionate temperament and gentle, friendly disposition. While they are eager to please, adaptable and intelligent, their independent spirit can sometimes be quite a challenge!

Greeting cards, laminated, matted, canvas and framed prints of “Solar – Siberian Husky” can be purchased from my Redbubble giftshop:

Redbubble now offers a selection of three card products to choose from – Greeting Cards are now available in the standard 4″ x 6″ or magnificent 5″ x 7.5″ versions. They are printed on marvellous matted card using state of the art digital printing technology and hold a remarkable external photo quality while retaining a wonderful writing surface on the inside. Greeting Cards are posted ready to fold and each with their own envelope. The new Postcards are a standard 4″ x 6″ and printed with the same technology and high degree of craftsmanship as the greeting cards and the flip side is adorned with the image name, artists details and space for your message, stamp and address details.

The quality of these Redbubble cards is excellent – certainly the quality is high enough to collect these as Art Cards and frame them to create a lovely display of small format art! Redbubble makes this an even more attractive purchase option by providing a healthy discount for multiple purchases of the same size cards – 4 greeting cards/20% discount, 8 greeting cards/30% discount, 16 greeting cards/40% discount. Similar discounts or free shipping offers apply for multiple purchases of other printed items at RedBubble, so look out for those while you shop!

Thanks for visiting my blog  and sharing my art and photography with your family and friends!

x Michelle

Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

FACEBOOK: Michelle Wrighton Artist

TWITTER: artistMichelleW

SHOP CUSTOMIZED ART PRINTS, T-SHIRTS & GIFTS: Zazzle

SHOP CARDS, MATTED, LAMINATED AND FRAMED ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY PRINTS: Redbubble

Bright, bold and colourful, this impressionist digital oil painting is based on a photograph I took of Canola fields in full bloom north of Kojonup (a small country town in the south west of Western Australia).

Canola out of Kojonup by Michelle Wrighton

Art prints and gifts featuring my ‘Canola out of Kojonup’  painting are available for sale in the following places;

Art By Michelle Etsy shop – signed and custom prints options for sale

Redbubble Art Shop Gift cards, matted, laminated, canvas and framed art prints for sale

Zazzle Art Shop Posters, ornaments, t-shirts, bags, posters, coffee mugs, canvas prints magnets, shoes, photo cards for sale

I can also be found on:  TWITTER FACEBOOK – My Art       FACEBOOK – My Photography     SOUTH WEST PHOTOGRAPHY – my photography website

Thanks for sharing my art and photography with your family and friends!

I have just changed over from using Photoshop CS4 to Lightroom 2.4 for processing my photographs – all I can say is I wish I had done this sooner!  As much as I resist learning new computer programs (fuzzy mummy brain I think), Lightroom is so quick to use compared to CS4, the time out I have taken to learn how to use it is going to be a huge benefit in improving my workflow, especially for batch processing.  Here is a selection of the first images that I have processed through Lightroom from my road trip down south to Boyup Brook.

The only nitpick that I have with Lightroom is the watermarking ability or lack thereof.  I have purchased the mogrify preset which allows me to use my standard watermark…but it places them at the same location in every image, which can obscure important elements of the photograph. Plus I need to make additional copies of the watermark for different opacity and colours so that I can select slightly more subtle watermarks to suit individual images better…either that or just continue to use CS4 and apply the watermarks manually for each image.

Other than that one issue, I can highly recommend Lightroom to any photographer looking to speed up their workflow.

I hope you enjoy these images, some of them will be available for purchase as prints http://southwestphotography.com.au in the near future.

Cheers

Michelle

Orange Flower © 2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook Farmland © 2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook Farmland © 2009 South West Photography

Blackwood River, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Blackwood River, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Rustic Relics, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Border Collie, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Border Collie, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

SOUTH WEST PHOTOGRAPHY: Portrait, Event, Landscape and Fine Art Photography Prints

Sometimes life just gets a little bit too stressful, and the best way to deal with it is a few hours in the country re-connecting with nature and the beautiful land that we live in.  Yesterday was one of those days, and what a joy to just take a few hours and enjoy the sunshine and the beauty of our South West.  I rarely go anywhere interesting without my camera in hand, so I do have a few of my favourite shots to share with you all:)

I’m very happy with these for several reasons, firstly every single shot was taken in full manual, and while I have always been pleased with the 50D’s output in the other creative settings that I normally use with changing light/movement situations, I can honestly say that nothing beats pure manual for getting the best images!  Secondly, and this is a biggie for me, I was shooting with the beast (70-200mm 2.8L), but every shot was hand held – the monopod didn’t go on the camera once!  This is truly amazing (to me anyway) as after my first attempt at shooting handheld with the beast when I first got the 50D was a disaster, it was so heavy it made my wrists hurt and every photo had severe camera shake and I never thought I would be able to use it handheld.

Purple Flowers at Harvey ©2009 South West Photography

Rustic Farm Building ©2009 South West Photography

One Tree Hill Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

"panoRAMa" Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook Farmland in July ©2009 South West Photography

Scarlet Breasted Robin Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

"Bird on a Wire" Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Donnybrook to Boyup Brook Landscape © 2009 South West Photography

Scarlet Robin, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

"Flight" Birdwatching in Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Blackwood River, Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook at Dusk © South West Photography

Little Lamb backlit by the Sun ©2009 South West Photography

The Golden Hour ©South West Photography

I have to say that I was really pleased with the last two – the little lamb was shot through a ringlock fence and I wasn’t sure if my settings where correct for the lens to blur out the wire strands, but obviously they were (yay for me).  I had to jump out of the car, over a muddy ditch and up a hill to say hi to three very friendly horses that came over to the fence when I called them.  It was the golden hour and the light from the sinking sun behind them was just magnificent while this big bay gelding happily posed for me to practice my silhouette shots:) In the full size, his chin whiskers look like threads of pure gold.

Ok, I think thats more than a few photos (I know, I just can’t help myself)…although I do have heaps more that I will add at some stage when I get time to process them.  I’d love to know which of the photos is your favourite and why, so please feel free to leave me a comment:)

Cheers

Michelle

South West Photography

A fleeting day trip through the south west.

Boyup Brook Farmland © 2009 South West Photography

Children's Playground - Donnybrook © 2009 South West Photography

Running from the mob © 2009 South West Photography

These images below show a tiny part of the devastation caused by the deliberatly lit bushfire that raged in the Bridgetown area in January 2009.  These images were taken out the window of the car while we were traveling at 110km per hour on South West Highway, so please excuse the less than perfect composition and clarity!

And no, I wasn’t driving *and* taking photos at the same time!

Bushfire devastation - Bridgetown © 2009 South West Photography

Bushfire devastation - Bridgetown © 2009 South West Photography

Bushfire devastation - Bridgetown © 2009 South West Photography

Bushfire devastation - Bridgetown © 2009 South West Photography

I’ve always loved the South West, the country life and small friendly towns.  We have made the decision to leave Perth and move to the country, to give our family a better environment to live in.  These things take time of course, so in the meantime I will have to be satisfied with the occasional day trip:)  These images were taken between Harvey, Donnybrook, Boyup Brook and Bridgetown.

South West Hayshed © Michelle Wrighton, South West Photography

South West Landscape © Michelle Wrighton, South West Photography

Round Hay Bales © Michelle Wrighton, South West Photography

Rolling Fields and Blue Skies © South West Photography

Cloud Patterns © 2008 Michelle Wrighton, South West Photography

Cows under Clouds © 2008 Michelle Wrighton, South West Photography

This is the latest piece I have been working on, an acrylic landscape painting created in a modern minimalist style on gallery wrapped chunky canvas. This painting developed quite differently from my original inspiration, so differently in fact that I initially started painting purple clouds! I am quite pleased with the way this one is coming along, as it was the strong contrasts in the light and darks of a desert sunset that I wanted to capture, and in particular I wanted to achieve this with rather bold brush strokes (considering the size of the canvas) and some pallette knife work for added texture. After looking at this piece for several days I am contemplating whether or not to further lighten some of the area around the sun, and some of the reflections in the middle of the painting.

One of the things that I am finding rather surprising with the modern, minimalist, abstract/contemporary styles that I am experimenting with at the moment is just how long they take to complete to my staisfaction – simple and less detailed definitely does not necessarily equate to less time to create, and I can definitely say that I have a new found respect for artists who work in these styles!

“Desert Sunset”, Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas, 2006

Right side view

Left side view

Cheers

Michelle