An Evening with Da Vinci

My sculpture supplies are packed in the car, and I am just about to head over to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The museum is hosting a Da Vinci After Dark party as part of their exhibit Leonardo da Vinci: Man, Inventor, Genius. There will be 2 bands, wine tastings, a cash bar, a couple of inventors and me working on a sculpture basted on some of Da Vinci's drawings.

This will be my first time to see the new building sense its completion earlier this year. I have heard lots of good things about it.

Testing the link from Flickr to Blogspot to Facebook

Walking Man, originally uploaded by Brad Ford Smith.

I just set up a Flickr blog link that "should" connect my Flickr, Blogspot and Facebook accounts. To test the connection I have selected a photo from a work in progress: Walking Man from the Rodin in Vermont Project.

This project began while I was at the Vermont Studio Center. I am using 48 pages from an old book on Rodin's sculptures as the building blocks to create new abstract shapes.

After the Flickring at the DMA

The Dallas Museum of Art Flickr group meet up today turned into a very nice roundtable of topics. We talked about the importance of putting titles on ALL of your photos, and how nice it is when there are descriptions too. Keeping things in titled SETS is a great way to keep the images organized by subject.

Tags are important, but there is still a mystery as to keeping the words in the tag separate: Dallas Museum of Art as opposed to dallasmuseumofart, which seems to be the Flickr tag default.

There was also some discussion about connecting and building a community on Flickr. Nicole from the DMA Flickr group and Stephen from Art and Seek talked about using Flickr as an extension of various cultural institutes.

Well, I did take notes so I could go on and on, but it seems that the best way to learn about Flickr is to use it, and to go to meet ups like the one at the DMA, or you might try DFW Area Meetup. Also the Dallas Camera Club.org.

Flickr meet up at the Dallas Museum of Art

DMA sculpture garden at sunset

I have been using a Flickr account for a few years now as an online portfolio. It has been working fairly well, no real complaints, but I know there is a lot more that I could do with it. So, with that in mind, Nicole Leigh leader of the Dallas Museum of Art Flickr Group and myself are hosting a Flickr meet up. 

We are inviting all local Flickr users to come down to the DMA Sunday July 11th at 2PM, for a coffee talk and laptop discussion about tips and tricks for making Flickr a better tool. With the free wifi at the DMA, everyone who brings their laptop will be able to pull up their sites, explore, and make changes in real time.

If the results of this event are positive, we might have another meet up next month. Let me know what you think... and, if you have a Flickr site send me a link.