What have Dreadlocks, Houston, Cape Verde and Bournemouth have in common?  Nothing until recently!
They say you never know what opportunities are waiting for you around the corner, and that has been certainly true for me.  On my return from a vacation with my wife Belinda, to the wonderful city of Rome, I was playing catch up with my work and personal emails.  Whilst checking my personal emails, I noticed that I had received an email from a Wendy Layne.  Wendy had emailed me asking for permission to draw one of my photos.

Hello.. I’ve been looking at your Flickr photos and they are amazing. I’m an up and coming artist and I do photo realistic color pencil drawings. I would love to have permission to be able to draw one of your photos. I especially like “Rasta Dreads, Rasta Hat” among other close ups of interesting peoples faces.

The photo in question is here.

I was intrigued to know how, out of the thousands of users on Flickr, Wendy came across my photos.

I was searching for images on Flickr. There is a guy on Flickr who takes pictures which are all copyright free but everyone was drawing his photos and he just didn’t quite have the type of photos (close up of faces) that I wanted nor did he have enough for me to choose from. So I did a Flickr search for what I wanted to draw… “Dreadlocks” and your photos came up. I saw they were all copyrighted and as an artist myself  I never use a photographers photos without permission. Especially since my drawings are photo realistic. But I’m not afraid to contact the owner to ask. I’ve had several photographers who love to let me draw their photos in the past but your photos struck me because I feel like I was with you on those trips. You take pictures of things I would want to draw and your composition is very similar to how I would have done it if I were there. I felt like you were taking pictures just for me to draw and had to reach out to you!!

I sent Wendy the original colour version below as this is what she required.

What Wendy created in approximately 20 hours, just using coloured pencils, and with very little sleep, I hope you agree is amazing.  Below are the photos that Wendy took that show how her artwork developed.

 

 




 

 

As Wendy’s artwork developed, my wife, Belinda thought that the original photograph had been taken by her.  On further investigation, she was right, we had set up a shared folder to produce an album of the photographs we had taken on our vacation to Cape Verde, and inadvertently, I had used one of her photo to Few Peep it.
We have Facetimed Wendy and her husband Walt, which has been great,as we had only connected via Twitter, Facebook and email.  Bizarrely, we found we had a number of other connections and similarities and the conversation flowed easily between us.
Subsequently, Belinda and I have agreed with Wendy, to supply her exclusively with photos of ours that she wishes to use to create further works of art.  In return, Wendy has agreed to send us the signed #1 of 500 Limited Edition print of any of our photos that she draws.
Recently, Belinda’s print and also one from a photo that I took arrived.  To do them justice, I took them to a local picture framing gallery called Classic Pictures.  Alan, the owner gave me some excellent advise on the appropriate frames, borders and importantly glass.  He also completed the job in two days, which was fantastic.


 
Both pieces of artwork now have pride of place in our lounge and will give us many years of wonderful memories, from the holiday on which we took the original photos, to the incredible story of connecting with Wendy, to the brilliant advise and customer service from Alan at Classic Pictures.
So life, on occasions throws up, what would appear random connections.  My advice would be not to dismiss them as you never know where these may lead.
If you wish to see more of Belinda’s photos, her Flickr photos can be found via Belinda Fewings on Flickr
You can view my photos on Unsplash this link and freely download them.
You can see more of Wendy’s work at Wendy Layne Art and join her on Facebook and Twitter.
Finally, if you would like to read more articles on either Team-building or Personal Development, please visit my website Ngagementworks.
Yours behaviourally, Nick
Wishing you continued success and happiness in both work and life.