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News, Updates & Announcements
Revised  10/8/2007

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Photo Book

Nicholas published a book of his photos titled Mendocino In The Seventies: People, Places and Events of the Mendocino Coast of California. There was a standing room only crowd for the December 2006 book release event at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. The 200 book limited first edition was completely sold out a week before Christmas. Fifty copies of the first revised edition were delivered the day after Christmas, but were gone in two days. After several more small printings, books are usually in stock at Gallery Bookshop and at Cheshire Books in Fort Bragg, and now Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah. Sales have continued to be stronger than expected, with over 450 copies sold to date and more on the way.

Follow the link above for more information about the book, including how to order by mail, and secure online ordering with your credit card.  There's also a page of sample photos from the book. 

There's an easy way to remember how to find the book's web page. Just "Google" the two words Mendocino Seventies and click on the first link found. You will find yourself at the top of the book page on this site, because Google lists it first out of over 5,540 web pages that include the two search words. That makes it really easy to tell people how to find the book's web page without remembering the exact web address. Thanks, Google!

Work in progress photo books include one featuring the natural and manmade scenery of the Mendocino Coast, and a special book on the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival, which will be released in time for sales at the 2008 festival.

 

Updates

10/8/2007 Update

The Autumn equinox has just passed, and the days are rapidly getting shorter. A week ago, Nicholas sold books at and did documentary photos of Caspar Fest 2007, the newest version of the annual fundraiser for the Caspar Community Center. He's preparing a web gallery of the event. You can see a brief preview gallery here. Also in the works are web galleries from Sol Fest 2007, the Kate Wolf festival 2007, and Great Day in Elk 2007.

Nicholas has some framed and ready-to-frame photos on exhibit at the Mendocino Art Center Gallery.

Nicholas just today accepted an invitation to exhibit at the prestigious Pangaea Cafe in Gualala, CA, the southernmost town on the Mendocino Coast, just across the county line from The Sea Ranch. The exhibit is to last two months. Exact dates and details will be announced.

9/17/2007 Update

It has been a busy and exciting summer, with many festivals, parades, weddings and special events photographed! There was the 2nd Annual Mendocino Film Festival in May, followed by the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival in June, Mendocino's July 4 parade and celebration, the Great Day in Elk in August, SolFest in September, and the Mendocino County Fair and Rodeo. Although only the film festival photos are posted to this site as of this writing, Nicholas is working on getting the rest of the event photos online as soon as possible.

Since August, Nicholas has been exhibiting at the Elk Studio Gallery as part of the Faces of Elk II show. The show was especially popular during the Great Day, and Nicholas has sold several large framed prints. In addition to six portraits of Elk people taken three decades ago, Nicholas' part of the show includes two limited edition prints of his best selling fine art scenics: Cuffey's Cove, 1973, and Fog and Fence, 1974, both taken near Elk. 

5/25/07 Update

A radio interview about the book on the National Public Radio Tech Nation show is available for online listening or as a podcast download. It runs a tad over 8 min., and can be found HERE.  There's also a new plug for the book on the Blurberati Blog

The book was featured on Anthony Miksak's Words On Books radio program on KZYX and Z for Dec. 17, 2006. You can read the review online.

The book is also featured on the printer's Blurberati Blog, which says as far as they know, the book is the first one they have manufactured that has been reviewed by an independent reviewer.

 

Exhibits and Public Appearances

Nicholas currently has a few prints on exhibit at the Mendocino Art Center Gallery. They are available framed and ready-to-frame.

Nicholas exhibited eight prints as part of the "Faces of Elk II" show upstairs at the Elk Studio Gallery. Several major prints were sold during the show, which was up for a month, including the Great Day in Elk event in September 2007.

Nicholas presented a slide show of his photographs Mar. 10, 2007 at the Caspar Community Center as part of a benefit for Lavery Murray's medical expenses. The show was well attended and well received.

Nicholas donated a framed print of his vintage color photo "Twilight Moon, Mendocino, 1981" to the Mendocino Coast Clinics benefit silent auction held Jan. 27, 2007 at Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg.. 

Nicholas had a photo exhibit at the Mendocino Art Center Abramson Gallery for the month of December 2006. The show and sale included exhibition prints of some of the photos in Nicholas' 2006 photo book, Mendocino in the Seventies.

Nicholas was a guest on KZYX Community Radio's Point & Click program, a computer and technology call-in show hosted by Bob Laughton and Jim Heid, on Wednesday Nov. 8, 2006. Nick talked about his forthcoming photo book and the new full-color high quality print-on-demand technology that makes it possible. Also on the show was Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb, Inc., the company that is printing the book. Program host Jim Heid has written about the show and Blurb.com on his Macintosh iLife blog, and has made a recording of the show available for download as an MP3 file

Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb Inc.,  came to the Mendocino Coast for a getaway weekend Nov. 17-19. Nicholas arranged for a public event at the Mendocino Hotel Garden Room banquet room for local photographers and book people to come meet Eileen and learn how they can make their own book with Blurb. There was a good turnout, and people enjoyed looking at over a dozen Blurb customer designed books that Eileen brought with her.

Nicholas was on Point & Click Radio on Oct. 18, 2006, during KZYX pledge week. Hosts Jim Heid and Bob Laughton asked for and raised a $500 pledge with one copy of Mendocino in the Seventies as a premium. It took a group of five people pledging $100 each, and it took over 20 min. to do it, while pitching the book nearly the whole time. 

Nicholas gave his second Kelley House Museum history talk and slide show of 2006 on Sunday, October 22. The topic was (what else?) Mendocino in the Seventies. The show included photos of historic events, people, some of whom are no longer with us, and businesses and buildings that are now gone or have changed into something else. The room was packed, and many more folks were turned away for lack of space. 

Nicholas contributed ten photos for inclusion in Mendocino County's exhibit at the 2006 California State Fair in Sacramento during September. The exhibit, which won a Silver Medal, was prepared by Rainmaker Marketing of Ukiah under contract to the Mendocino Promotional Alliance. Congrats to Rainmaker! Photos in the exhibit portrayed people and events of the Mendocino Coast counterculture in the 1970s. We hope to get some photos of the exhibit to post here.

 From June through August 20, 2006, Nicholas participated in the exhibit "Art Inspired by the Mendocino Music Festival" at the Ford House Museum on Main St. in Mendocino. He also contributed a panel of nine photos to the historical photo exhibit on the Mendocino Music Festival on display in the Ford House's central room. This year was the 20th season of the annual Mendocino Music Festival.

Nicholas is cooking up a 35-year career retrospective exhibit looking back on his multifaceted work since taking up photography as his profession. He's hoping to locate a large enough venue and mount the exhibition sometime in 2007. His first professional photo (meaning he was paid for it) was a publicity shot for the Cat Mother rock band, taken in December 1971

Nicholas has been an unofficial Mendocino old-timer since giving his first history talk and slide show at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino in March 2006. The subject was the Mendocino Whale War of 1976, marking the 30th anniversary  of the MWW. There's a MWW web gallery on this site that includes most of Nicholas' shots presented at the Kelley House. Ellen Herdegen, who served as secretary of the board of directors of the MWW, provided additional photos and documents for the slide show and the historical exhibits on display. 

 

Music, Festivals and Special Events

Nicholas photographed the Caspar Fest 2007, the first in a new approach to what used to be called the Caspar World Folk Festival. Now the emphasis was on Sustainable Living, with an outdoor crafts market, live entertainment on an outdoor stage that featured Joe Craven, circus acts, Los Piratas Del Caribe band, Alice DiMicele, Kevin and the Coconuts steel band, The Blushin' Roulettes, and more. Lots of food and drink was consumed. There was also a hot-air balloon pilot giving rides. Web gallery in progress. See www.casparfest.org for details.

Nicholas photographed the 2007 Mendocino County Fair, including the parade, the sheep dog trials and the rodeo in September, and will soon post a web gallery. 

Nicholas photographed the Great Day in Elk parade and events including the greased pole climb, watermelon eating contest and raw egg toss. Look for a web gallery soon. More details at http://www.elkcoast.com/greenwoodcommunitycenter/greatday.html 

Nicholas photographed the SolFest 2007 at the Solar Living Center in Hopland, and will soon post a web gallery. Details at http://www.solarliving.org/display.asp?catid=17 

Nicholas was an official festival photographer for the fourth year at the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival 2007, held the last weekend in June each year at Black Oak Ranch near Laytonville in northern Mendocino County. Featured artists this year included Richie Havens, David Bromberg and the Angel Band, Marcia Ball, Laura Love, Dave Alvin, Hot Tuna Acoustic, The Be Good Tanyas, Joe Craven, Nina Gerber, Rosalie Sorrells, Eliza Gilkyson, Dougie MacLean Band, The Bills, The Devil Makes Three, Robin & Linda Williams, and many more. Nicholas is hard at work preparing a new web photo gallery for the event. When it's ready, you will find it linked from the Kate Wolf Music Festival page along with photos of the 2004, 2005 and 2006 festivals. Nicholas is planning a photo book of Kate Wolf festival images to be sold at the 2008 festival.

Nicholas once again photographed Mendocino's annual July 4 Parade and Independence Day celebrations. The 2006 July 4 photos can be viewed from a special website that makes it easy to order prints and related items. The roughly 200 parade photos can be viewed either from a web page or as part of a fast-changing automatic slide show. There are separate albums and slideshows for the post-parade events at the Ford House, Kelley House and Friendship Park featuring music by Kevin and the Coconuts, the Steven Bates Band, and Rogerwood. The special website is hosted by dotphoto.com, a commercial photo web hosting and printing service used by many professional photographers and by newspapers, including the Mendocino Beacon and Fort Bragg Advocate-News.

Nicholas participated in the inaugural Mendocino Film Festival in May 2006, where he photographed special workshops and guest appearances by director Sydney Pollack, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs and lighting director Rich Aguilar. He also documented the 2007 festival, featuring special guest Albert Maysles. Look for links to the Mendocino Film Festival web galleries on the Events Page.

Nicholas photographed the final performance April 30, 2006, of Opera Fresca's production of Giacomo Puccini's "La Bohème" for his longtime friend Gail Daly, whose costume designs one reviewer described as "like a scene from a Toulouse Lautrec painting." Due to the last minute scheduling of the photo shoot, he had to photograph from the balcony of Eagles Hall Theater. The distance and the limited working space meant that he had to use a telephoto zoom lens and a tripod in a fixed location for the entire performance. Nevertheless, Nick is happy with the results, and Gail said she is too. The La Bohème photo gallery gets a lot of visitors. See it for yourself. Thanks to Opera Fresca impresario Clare Barca for permission to photograph the performance.

 

New Limited Edition Prints

Nicholas recently sold print number one of a new limited edition of 300 archival prints of his classic "Cuffey's Cove, 1973" scenic marine view. These prints are 20" x 15" on 22" x 17" paper, printed directly from new high-resolution scans of the original 35mm negative. They are printed with Ultrachrome K3 archival pigment inks in an Epson Pro 4800 professional grade print engine. Every step of the process is personally done by Nicholas Wilson. He's happy to say that this new process delivers prints that look as good as or better than any print he ever made in the old wet darkroom. A new limited edition of his best-selling "Fog and Fences, 1974" image is also available now. Eventually all of his classic black and white exhibition prints will be available, as well as his newer color work.

Framing Prints

Virtually any photo included in Nicholas' new photo book Mendocino In The Seventies or seen on this website can now be ordered as an archival framing print in sizes 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20. A new high-end Nikon LS-5000ED film scanner gives state of the art access to Nicholas' 36 years of film negatives and color slides. Write to mail@nwilsonphoto.com for availability and pricing.

Cards and Posters

Poster prints and handmade greeting cards of some of Nicholas's scenic photos are on sale at Mendocino Gift Company on Kasten St. in Mendocino. Some of his Mendocino Music Festival and state park related greeting cards are also on sale at the Ford House Museum and Visitor Center on Main St. in Mendocino.

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