Prepping For Black Friday #2 – Sale On Etsy Prints!

As we approach Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, I have another post about my wares, this time with a big, fat, site-wide discount!

Now Has Come The Time For Silence – © Sarah Allegra – fine art print

Enter code MYTHIC2014 to get a whopping 20% off any and all items from my Etsy shop!  This is a huge sale, the biggest I’ve ever created, so take advantage of it while it’s active!  It will be good until January 31st 2015; perfect for buying holiday gifts for yourself and others, as well as spending any Christmas money you might get 🙂

Let me tell you a little bit about my prints.  They are made at an extremely high-quality printer in downtown Los Angeles.  My printer is not at all easy to get to; there is always traffic and I manage to get lost and the entire experience of getting there is terrible, but I wouldn’t change printers for the world.  Even if I moved out of state, I’d keep using them and have them ship me my prints.  The incredible quality of the prints they deliver is just that high.

Aerie – © Sarah Allegra – fine art print

Each and every image is carefully calibrated to reveal even the tiniest details.  They somehow manage to keep the highlights high and the lowlights low without a single pixel’s worth of detail loss.  The colors are an exact match for how I intend the images to look.  These are NOT easy things!  I have been through many printers before I found POV Evolving.  And a special shout-out and thank you to Lauren, who always handles my orders!  She is a delightful person and makes sure each and every image created is perfect.

In addition to all that, they only use archival inks and paper, making prints that are museum-quality and which will last for a lifetime!  The paper they use is this thick, luscious paper, almost like watercolor paper; nothing cheap or flimsy.  Every single time I have an image printed, I’m impressed with how amazing it looks, even though I’ve been seeing how great they look for several years!

To The Lost – © Sarah Allegra – fine art print

In addition to the incredible quality of every print, all my images come in limited edition runs.  There are a few exceptions, but generally it looks like this:

12 size small prints at 8″ x 12″

10 size medium prints at 10″ x 15″

7 size large prints at 16″ x 24”

That means that there will only ever be 7 prints made of that particular image in that size, in the entire world, ever!

Occasionally, I also have props or wearable art available in my shop as well!  Right now, you can have your own Wind Goddess headdress, which also looks quite wintery, for not very much 🙂

Where Earth Meets The Sky – detail.

The Wind Goddess Headdress available on Etsy now!

I also have a section of my shop dedicated to ME/CFS/fibro-inspired prints from my Enchanted Sleep series!

Each and every print will come signed and numbered along the white border.  If you’d like a short, special message included, I’m happy to add that for you, free of charge!

One more word about my prints; the quality of them was high enough that Peter S. Beagle himself took them along legs of his The Last Unicorn screening tour.

Five of my prints along the left side of this photo (photo not taken by me)

This was extra special because not only was Peter S. Beagle, one of the biggest sources of inspiration to me and one of my two favorite authors (the other being Robin McKinley) had this adorable moment with Game Of Thrones author George RR Martin right in front of my prints:

Peter S. Beagle and George RR Martin with plushies, in front of my prints!

I’d like to say quickly that the above photo went a bit viral and I have been credited as the photographer, but I did not take this photo.  I wasn’t even in the same state as they were at the time!  I tweeted about the photo since it’s adorable and also in front of my prints, and then it really took off, but I did not snap the image, and though I have tried to correct news sources, they continue listing me as the photographer.  So, I’m sorry to whoever did take this photo; I have tried to set the record straight!

This Dying Body – © Sarah Allegra – fine art print

Take a look around my Etsy shop and don’t forget to use your discount code MYTHIC2014 to get 20% your entire order!  Let me restate that this is the biggest, farthest-reaching sale I have ever had on my prints, so be sure to take advantage of it while it lasts!

If there is a certain image you’d like a print of, or you see an image you like but want it in a different size, just let me know!  Some of my images are under contract and I am unable to sell prints of them for that reason, but the majority of the time, I will be able to accommodate you very easily!

Remember, the discount code is only good until January 31st 2015, so get ready, get set… go!!  Happy shopping!

Katie Jonson being silly and posing with a framed print she modeled in

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To The Lost Fundraiser

As a continuation of my last post, this one will also be talking about Andrew Ashcraft, the boy I played with when I was young who grew up to be one of the fallen Hotshot heroes from Arizona’s recent fires.

I created a photo to work through my grief, as I often do, but it didn’t feel like enough.  I kept thinking about Andrew’s poor widow, left with their four very young children to raise, all on her own.  And then I’d think about the families of the 18 other firefighters and how would they get by, and I had to do something.

So, 75% of all profits made from any sales of To The Lost will go to directly to the families through the donation program set up.  This applied to anything and everything To The Lost appears on.  I have, of course, my extremely beautiful and archival fine art prints, and also blank cards, stickers, clothing, Ipod, Iphone and Ipad cases.

There are 19 families left without fathers, husbands, providers.  The last thing they need while they’re still reeling from the profound loss is to worry about how the bills are going to get paid.  Let’s give them some of the aid they need.

To The Lost

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To The Lost

It was last Tuesday, July 2nd, that I found out about the tragic deaths of the nineteen firefighters in Arizona a few days earlier.  At the same time, I discovered my childhood friend, Andrew Ashcraft, was one of those lost.  It took a while to sink in.  Andrew, who I had played with for years, was gone.

Not only Andrew, but eighteen others of Arizona’s finest firefighters were lost.   They were called the Granite Mountain Hotshot crew; essentially the Navy Seals of the fire world.  They were trained to go into the deadliest, most dire situations and kick the fire’s ass.  They went in to make a fuel break for the devastating forest fire when the wind changed and trapped them.  There was no escape.

My heart breaks for Andrew’s widow, left to raise their four very young children, the oldest of whom is merely six, by herself.  It breaks for Andrew’s mother Deborah, who has to bury one of her children.  It breaks for the eighteen others families in the same situation.

Andrew with his family

Andrew was only 29.  He had been named the 2011 Rookie of the Year in the Hotshot crew.  He’d had to really work to get into the crew.   That was what he wanted to do.  He chose to be the best, bravest, most worthy of men.  I am in awe.

It’s important for me to state that it had been a long time since I’d seen Andrew… I was probably 13 or so.  But he and his brother TJ were a big part of my childhood.   Our moms were friends and would frequently trade babysitting, so for years my brother and I saw and played with the Ashcraft boys several times a week.  My brother was the oldest of us, TJ was next, then me and Andrew was the youngest, even though only four years separated us all.  It was just enough of an age difference that the older two boys would want to go off and do Secret Older Boy Things together (mostly involving GI Joes, as I recall) so Andrew and I were often our own group… which sometimes consisted merely of sulking about being left out of Secret Boy Things.  But we made our own fun.

I can’t find a photo of the four of us together, but here’s a photo of myself (in front), TJ and my brother in some strange church play.

One of the clearest memories I have of the four of us is arguing heatedly over who played which character when we would play Batman.  My brother, the oldest, was naturally Batman.  When he and I played it at home, I was Robin, and I felt that was my part.  But TJ’s slight age difference made a good argument in the logic of children for him assuming the role of Robin.  The debate was settled when we found out about Batgirl, who I would obviously play, leaving Robin to TJ.  But poor Andrew was always forced to play Alfred or some random henchmen; he never got to play a really good character.  I had laughingly told this story to Geoff quite a while ago, not realizing the irony that was to come.

Andrew grew up to be a real, living, actual hero.  He lived his heroism more than any person I know of.  He went out doing what he loved, with the men he loved, and if he ever felt fear, he never let it stop him.  I am so sad his family has lost him.  I am sad that the world has lost such an amazing person.  And I am sad that I never got to know Andrew at this age, that we lost touch, and I only discovered what an incredible person he was second hand.  The world is nineteen wonderful souls poorer.

As I cried into Geoff’s chest the day I heard the news, one of the first things he asked was how I was going to work through my feelings photographically.  This is just one of the many reasons I love him, because I was already mentally hard at work trying out different concepts and trying to figure it out.  As I was working through my grief and trying to put my feelings into a visual form, I was also talking a lot with Katie, who had recently experienced a similar kind of loss.  It was a great comfort to have her and other people in my life familiar with grief to talk to.  Katie and I already had a shoot planned in a few days, so I told her to just expect that we would shoot something to honor Andrew and the other firefighters.

This was another shoot done on a non-budget.  It took just a few big, yellow smoke bombs and the fresh flowers.  Also, HUGE thanks to Geoff for being my human shutter release!

Usually I edit things in order of them being shot, as that seems fairest, but this got bumped way up in line.  I really wanted it to be released today, the day of the big memorial service in Prescott.  You’ll see that Katie is playing the role of the rescuer, pulling me to safety, but not far from the danger herself.  The smoke wrapping around my body and throat actually happened exactly like that, straight out of camera, and seems to want to pull me back and not let go.  Katie is carrying nineteen large orange, yellow and red flowers, symbolizing the fallen heroes, and I like that there are smaller yellow flowers connected to the stalks; they seem to symbolize the fireman’s family.

When I searched for a title for this photo, I immediately remembered what Jimmy in Boardwalk Empire says before each drink instead of the standard “cheers” or “bottom’s up;” he says “to the lost.”  For Jimmy it was about his lost comrades during the war, but it seemed to fit here perfectly.  This is also only the second time I’ve ever done a square crop on a photo.  For the most part I stick very strictly to my 2×3 ratio.  This photo just called for something else, so I went with it.  There are some detail shots of the photo below.

I hope Andrew’s family heals as quickly as it can, along with the rest of the families.  There is nothing I can say or do that can make it better for them.  How I wish there was.  All I can do is try to honor the fallen heroes, with my words, my photos, and my many, many tears.

Andrew was a badass… but the very best kind, who hasn’t lost his softer side.  He was a true hero, like Prince Lir.  We didn’t know that Andrew was the biggest hero of us all.

He should have been Batman.

You can donate directly to Andrew’s family here.

To The Lost

To The Lost – detail

To The Lost – detail

To The Lost – detail

To The Lost – detail

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