WE CAN'T BELIEVE IT! OUR “CELESTIAL ADVENTURES” PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION WON A SCARBOROUGH ARTS AWARD FOR BEST DEBUT EXHIBITION! THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THIS POSSIBLE! 🥰💖
On Friday afternoon we received a surprise email notifying us that we were nominated for one of the awards categories for Scarborough Arts! 🙀
We were incredibly surprised and honoured to have been selected and considered for the award category for best debut exhibition, and we were even more surprised and honoured when we found out that we actually won the award!
Words can’t describe how happy we were to learn this news after we worked so hard on putting the exhibition together. We would like to thank everyone who made the exhibition possible and made it such a wonderful and positive experience too.
We unfortunately could not be at the award ceremony ourselves as we are currently away at the very South of the country in order to capture some Milky Way core landscape images we have been planning to capture for a while. So we asked our good friend Callum (who helps us with our Astro Dog stargazing events in Dalby Forest) to go to the ceremony on our behalf. It was Callum that informed us that we won the award and we would like to thank him for all his help and representing us at the awards ceremony.
REFLECTING ON OUR DEBUT PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION “CELESTIAL ADVENTURES”
With so much initially going wrong from laptop and hard drive failures, picture frames arriving damaged, and trouble with getting our photographs printed, amongst many other problems and challenges, we didn't think we'd make it. Thankfully it all came together in the end and once we moved into the Shakespeare Gallery, it was a wonderful experience.
Our exhibition “Celestial Adventures” was the first time we have ever exhibited our photography and it was also the first time we have ever seen our work printed. Prior to our exhibition, we had shared some of our photography online, but we have always wanted to get out there and share our work in physical format and we are so grateful that we were given the opportunity to do so. To see our work printed, displayed and shared with others in the beautiful space of the Shakespeare Gallery has been amazing.
We met so many wonderful and interesting people at the Shakespeare Gallery. It was amazing to see so many people from all around Scarborough and beyond coming to visit us. We also had a lot of children visit our exhibition, seeing their excitement and wonder has been very special. We had such lovely and heart-warming feedback throughout our exhibition too, and it has been a delight meeting you all. Luna has loved meeting you all too. All of the pats, cuddles and treats were very much appreciated. 🐶
One particular moment that stands out for us, includes a person that featured in one of our Aurora photographs. In our Bonfire/Guy Fawkes night Jackson Bay Aurora image, there is the silhouette of a father and son, and on one day at the exhibition we had been thinking about how to get in touch with them to let them know they featured in this photograph. Well, by chance the next day the son turned up to our exhibition! He purchased a print of the photograph for his dad and expressed how thankful he was for capturing a special moment/memory he shared with his father. He also thanked us for all the online/social media work we do to alert people of what to look at in the night sky. He very nicely said because of our online outreach posts many more people are venturing out on their own celestial adventures, looking up at the night sky, creating their own special memories, and that when walking around the exhibition many people would connect/relate to the photographs because of this. It was a lovely heart-warming moment that we will remember from our exhibition.
Many other visitors to our exhibition also decided to take prints of our photographs home with them, we are so thrilled that so many people liked our work that much! The thought that people enjoy our work so much that they'd like to display it in their homes has made us so happy.
We even had people being moved to tears by certain memories and connections they made with our images and with the online outreach work we do. It has been so touching to see/hear these reactions and comments, it really is humbling and it makes us feel all the hard work we do is worthwhile.
It was an absolute pleasure to be able to exhibit in the Shakespeare Gallery, a very special space that was given new life by an incredible group of people. Andrew, along with the team at the Old Parcels Office and all the volunteers who worked on the Shakespeare have done an incredible job breathing life back into such an amazing building and allowing it to now be used by local creatives to exhibit their work and use as studio space.
THANK YOU
We would like to say to a huge thank you to Andrew Alddis who helped us to get our exhibition sorted and made us feel at home as soon as we walked into the Shakespeare. He has done fantastic work with the Shakespeare and helped so many other creatives to be able to exhibit their work. We are delighted to hear that the Shakespeare Gallery also won an award for best Venue for Scarborough Arts. Well deserved! 🥳
We would also like to say a big thank you to Julian and Catherine of Scarborough Fair for providing us with the opportunity to take part in Scarborough Art, a big thank you to everyone who has helped us out with our exhibition and made it possible, and last but not least, an astronomical thank you to each and every one of you that came and supported us on our very first photography exhibition adventure!
EXHIBITION AT PICTURESQUE FRAMING
If you were wanting to visit our exhibition but didn’t have the chance to, don’t worry! Thanks to a kind offer from Alex at Picturesque, we will be holding another exhibition at his store - Picturesque Framing on St. John’s Road, Scarborough in the near future. We will be exhibiting some (possibly all) of the images that were displayed in the Shakespeare, and will let you all know the details of this exhibition very soon.
CLOSING WORDS
All in all, we had such an incredible experience at the Shakespeare during Celestial Adventures. We had such a great time and such wonderful reactions, that we are already thinking of holding more photography exhibitions in the future. It has been so amazing, heartening, inspiring, uplifting, and humbling. There aren’t enough words to describe how amazing it has been, and we are so grateful to have be given the opportunity and for all the support we have been shown.
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for making our debut exhibition Celestial Adventures such a great experience. You're all stars. 💖✨️