During a time when we were beta testing Luchaes in Maui, Hawaii we were fortunate to work with an extraordinarily talented individual by the name of Randy Hufford (www.RandyHuffordArt.com). Randy is a person of many talents in that he is a professional photographer, teaches classes in photography, teaches classes in Photoshop, manages a photo processing studio, and also does picture framing. With so many talents Randy was the most obvious choice for beta testing the Luchae light panels.
Another asset of Randy is that he constantly thinks outside of the box by pushing the limit on what can be done with printing and framing. Fortunately most of the time that Randy printed and framed Luchaes for potential customers he took photographs of the final product.
In most cases the photographers and artists wanted to keep the framing simple in order to highlight the Luchae image. However, occasionally Randy was able to get very creative by using standoffs and shadow boxes.
We have tried to show many of Randy’s projects below so that you can see the beauty of these Luchaes and also so that you can see some of the creative ways that some of the Luchaes have been framed. We have listed these photographers and artists below in the alphabetical order of their first names.
Cameron Nelson
Cameron Nelson is a professional photographer who also likes to surf. He submitted the five photographs shown below to Randy Hufford to be made into Luchaes. My head is still spinning trying to figure out how he captured some of these images.
Dale Zarella
Dale Zarrella is a very accomplished sculpture. My favorite sculpture from Dale is a life-size bronze that he made of Father Damien who was the Belgium priest that cared for the lepers on the Island of Molokai in Hawaii. About 15 years ago Father Damien was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. The Pope was so impressed by Dale’s bronze sculpture of Father Damien that Dale was asked to have a personal sit down with the Pope.
Throughout Dale’s career he was encouraged to expand into painting which he always rejected as being of no interest to him. Then one day he had an accident that resulted in his breaking several ribs which prevented Dale from working on his sculptures for several months.
Out of boredom from not being able to work he took up painting which included all of the paintings shown below. I think of Dale as having some parallels to Michael Angelo in that both started their careers as sculptures and progressed to painting and both individuals met with the Pope albeit Dale’s was less frequent and for a shorter time.
When Dale heard about Luchaes he thought it would be the perfect medium for restoring the light that is lost when a painting is reduced to two dimensions.
Ed Lane
Ed Lane refers to his oil painting as the Art of Exuberance. One look at his images shows why that description is so appropriate. A highly awarded and collected artist, Ed’s paintings have been in over 50 national juried exhibitions. His subject matter includes landscapes and people from Hawaii as well as reflecting his travels in Europe, Tahiti, and the Azore Islands of Portugal.
Ed holds a soft spot in my heart because he was one of the first artists to not only experiment with Luchaes but also the fastest to generate sales. During Ed’s first gallery showing of Luchaes he sold Rainforest Patterns , the painting highlighted below in a square of red, in the first minute of the unveiling for $7,500.
“I see this art form is perfect for installation in restaurants and public spaces as well as in private collections. With the ability to control the light intensity, the painting can become a wonderful dimly lit mood piece or can be transformed to a brightly sunlit light source for a dark room,” says Lane.
Jenn Wakefield
www.facebook.com/jennwakefieldwhales/
Jenn Wakefield specializes in underwater photography. As can be seen in the photograph shown below Jenn loves to scuba dive where she can get up close and personal with the humpback whales that are so numerous in Hawaii. Jenn loves the way Luchaes make her underwater photographs come alive with realism.
John Hugg
John Hugg is a master framer who works for Randy Hufford. John is also an accomplished photographer who sells his photographs through some of the galleries located on Maui. John does not have a website but he can be contacted through the email address shown above.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working with John through Randy Hufford because John is quite skilled at implementing many of the creative framing concepts that Randy developed for Luchaes. Some of the first photographs that John framed as Luchaes were of the Mauna Kea volcano on the big Island of Hawaii.
In some later framing projects Randy Hufford and John Hugg experimented with using standoffs to mount the Luchae images within shadow boxes, in different colors, and in different planes as illustrated below. The thumbnail picture shown below of the back of the light panel shows how the hole for the standoff bolt was drilled right through the back of the Luchae light panel. This feature allowed John to use the standoffs to float mount some of his images in different planes without creating any dark shadows around the standoff areas. This type of framing can’t be done with most of the traditional light boxes being sold in the industry but it is easy with the Luchae light panels.
I am happy to inform that some of these Luchaes are now on display in the city offices of Maui.
Randy Hufford
As mentioned in the beginning Randy Hufford is an accomplished photographer. Shown below are some luchaes of Randy’s work.
Frequently Randy comes up with ideas for Luchaes that astonish everyone with his creativeness. Shown below is an example in which one of Randy’s clients asked him to frame a black and white portrait. Randy took this a step further by using a double layering effect in which the top image of the portrait was printed in black and white. Then the identical image in color was printed and laminated to the back of the black and white image. The effect which is illustrated below is that in the non-backlit reflective mode the portrait is seen in black and white. But when the Luchae light panel is turned on the backlit image becomes full-color.
Shawn Power
Shawn Power used to be a producer of television programs; mostly for the Home and Garden Network but then a few years ago Shawn moved to Maui, Hawaii to pursue his love of art. Shawn uses a special process for his art known as water-infused photography.
Shawn has explained this process to me on numerous occasions but I feel ill-equipped to explain it here. Recently Shawn discovered that backlighting his water-infused images with Luchae light panels gives his images a very dramatic effect without losing the trueness of the colors.
Shawn has been so enthusiastic about Luchaes that he has worked closely with Randy Hufford in having Luchaes printed, framed, and even displayed through gallery showings with Randy Hufford. Shown below is a small sampling of some of Shawn’s beautiful water-infused photographs as Luchaes.
Spar Street
Spar Street is such an extraordinarily gifted painter of abstracts that most of his oil paintings have a starting price of around $40,000 with many of his more popular paintings selling for as much as $100,000. Spar has been intrigued with the way Luchaes restore the light that is lost when an image is reduced to two dimensions as with an oil painting so he has been experimenting with this process with the two paintings shown below.
