Tiffany Panas usually stands behind the camera but she is thrilled that her photography has given her a chance to stand in a shot too. The St. Albert-raised photographer behind Edmonton's Call It Love Photography recently had one of her newborn and maternity photos published on the cover of a professional quarterly magazine out of North Carolina.
It's a bigger deal than just the cover though. The International Journal for Childbirth Education features a fine selection of her work.
"I actually had eight photos chosen," she confessed. "I'm super, super excited. It's awesome."
As if that wasn't enough, the periodical will also publish her work on the covers for the next two quarterly issues. Inside the latest edition, there are several other samples of Panas' work illustrating different articles.
It's a pretty good display of her range of skills. She's taken her fair share of pictures of pregnant women and their newborns, but most of her work now features modern wedding portraits and romantic shots of couples and lovers kissing or in embraces.
This gig, she explained, is a huge honour especially considering that the publisher, the International Childbirth Education Association, is such a well respected and renowned organization and that the magazine is available internationally.
In fact, she got the job because of a recent photo shoot and a great coincidence. A friend of a friend wanted some maternity and newborn pictures and Panas was only too happy to oblige.
"They absolutely loved them. Once they got their photos from the newborn session, she was like, 'Oh my gosh! My aunt absolutely loved the photos and she wants to know if she can use them for her magazine.' I was more than happy. I submitted 60 photos. [The aunt] said, 'We took a whole bunch. Your photos are awesome! Keep'em coming.' The rest is history."
To see more samples of Panas' work, visit her website at www.callitlovephotography.com.
New public art still a work in progress
It's still a few weeks away but local visual artists Bella Totino and Verne Busby are still hard at work on the city's newest piece of public art, an image that features some of Big Lake's waterfowl.
"I'm cutting geese," Busby said on Wednesday. "I'll be cutting geese for the rest of the afternoon."
The new piece is a collaboration of some tall proportions. Once completed, the multi-panel work will rise 4.8 m high, cover 23 sq m and weigh approximately 907 kg in total. It will use close to 49,000 glass tiles called tessera that originated from Italy and Japan.
The durability of the materials bodes well for how long it is expected to last as a fixture on the Art in Public Places map.
"I will fade a lot quicker than this will," Busby stated.
Once completed, it will be installed on a new city building located at 50 Bellerose Drive. That is scheduled to take place sometime in September.
Totino is no stranger to sizable contributions to public art. She created Healthy Communities, the 2.1m x 10.1m acrylic mural installed on the south wall of 10 Perron Street, back in 1999.
"That took a month," Busby said.
It's an excellent sign that she is well versed in these projects, especially considering the break-neck pace that these two have been working. They first started the work at the end of June, spending an entire week to prepare the tesserae to be mounted on the wonderboard backing.
"This is the largest piece that we've worked on," he said.
This is the first project that falls under the city's new Percent for Public Art Policy. This policy means that the city will fund between 0.5 and 1 per cent of the cost of all new buildings, major restorations and building project costs to fund the accession of public art.
