This is a long post. I’m not sure I could tell this story effectively with fewer words. Sit back and have a read. (If you’re friends of mine or of Wanda’s on Facebook, you may have heard this story before…)
Last weekend Wanda and I went down to the Gold Coast for the AIPP’s annual national conference, the Nikon Event. Three days of lectures, workshops, and social events, culminating in a gala dinner and charity auction, where this year the speakers’ prints were auctioned off to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation. Was a pretty damn fantastic three days, made even more fantastic by a bit of an unusual story.
Wanda is a massive fan of Australian fine art photographer Alexia Sinclair. As soon as Wanda discovered her work, she knew she wanted to own a piece someday. Normally Alexia’s pieces are very limited edition, selling for thousands of dollars. For her most recent series A Frozen Tale, she made one of her pieces, “Cabinets of Curiosity”, available to buy for one month only. (Take a break from my little story to read about it and watch the video for a pretty cool behind-the-scenes look at producing Cabinets of Curiosity.)
Wanda texted me right on the deadline for buying a print, and I may have fibbed to her and told her that we’d missed it… because I’d just bought one and tucked it away for her as a surprise birthday present! Ten points to me, I’m a terrible gift-buyer, and to buy the right thing and keep it as a surprise is a big deal for me. I knew she would love it when the surprise was revealed – but for now she was heartbroken that she’d missed it.
At the Nikon Event, Robert Gatto from Kayell and Glen TeWierik from Canson ran a competition – bring an image, print it at the Kayell stand, and put it up on the wall, and Alexia would choose her favourite print each day. The winner on each of the three days received a Cabinets of Curiosity print! Wanda was super-excited, and very keen for one of us to have a crack at winning this print. Ah, hmm. What to do, what to do. I already had one tucked away for her, but if I didn’t enter, or entered something that wasn’t very good, I’d look like a completely unsupportive and horrible husband.
So I put my best foot forward, entering the Dawn image that did well at the 2014 QPPAs. And that was the print Alexia selected!
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To say Wanda was over the moon would be a pretty serious understatement! Pretty sure you could hear her squeals of delight from Brisbane. Me on the other hand, now I had a little conundrum – two identical prints, and since one of them was still a surprise, I couldn’t share my problem with Wanda. “Hey Wanda, you know that print I won that you super duper love? I’m going to give it to my mum. Mmkay?”
We knew Rob and Glen from a landscape workshop last year, and both of them knew that I had a print tucked away for Wanda’s birthday. When they mentioned it to Alexia and her husband James, they wondered if I would be up for donating the print to the print auction. The idea caught me by surprise… but totally the right thing to do, and I was keen. All I had to do was get Wanda on board. I broke the news to Wanda that I’d been storing one away for her, and now we had two. I was hoping she’d agree to putting it in to the auction. “So… What do you want to do?” Her very first instinct was to suggest that we give the print up for the auction. I’m so proud of her and her generous heart!
The excellent AIPP folks listened to the story patiently, and then they were on board as well. Normally they limit speakers to putting in one print only, but they made a bit of an exception because of the unusual circumstance.
Jerry and Melissa Ghionis are hugely well known in the photography world, both for their photography and for their talents in speaking and teaching. They confided in us afterwards that they fell in love with Cabinets of Curiosity during Alexia’s keynote, and they were really hoping it would be the one that was up for auction!
At the gala dinner, after Alexia’s first print went up and was sold, the MC (Tony Hewitt, Australian Professional Photographer of the Year 2013) told the story, and up comes Cabinets of Curiosity. After a bit of a fierce bidding war, Jerry and Melissa Ghionis came out on top, bidding $4300!!
$4300!!
All up, just shy of $60,000 was raised for the Make a Wish foundation, including $16,000 from a print shot and produced over the Event by our friend and 2013 AIPP Australian Portrait Photographer of the Year, Mandarine Montgomery. That’s pretty cool, and it will make a big difference to some kids that really deserve something good. And we got to be a little part of the story. It was a pretty amazing way to end the three days. I think we’re still both buzzing off of that energy. Wanda’s generous heart was full to bursting.
That’s not our actual Cabinets of Curiosity print in today’s photo… it’s just a postcard. The print is still safely tucked away in its acid-free wrap in that black tube, ready to go to the framers. High five to our friends Fiona Handbury and Mandarine for winning prints as well!
