Bonnie Pelnar - Experience & CredentialsSince kindergarten, I always got strait A's in art, but I never took seriously the idea of making a career out of being an artist. So I started college in Nursing School at the University of Wisconsin and took art classes for fun and for escape. I paid my way through school by working in a ski shop in the winter and marina in the summer. After much encouragement from the Art Department Chairman, who insisted I could make a living as an artist, I switched majors and later graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in Graphic Art & Photography. I jumped right into the publishing world and started as a graphic artist for a publishing company in Oshkosh. After a short vacation in California I was drawn back by the opportunity and the climate. I packed up the Toyota with my cat, my art supplies, and my skis, and headed west. When I arrived I immediately got a job with an ad agency in Newport Beach.
While at Genigraphics I won several President's Club sales award trips, which were almost always to tropical destinations. I got a taste of the deep. It was in 1987 that I did my open water certification and headed immediately to Cozumel for my first warm-water dive trip with a Motormarine camera. I've been there 21 times since and make the trip back to see my Cozumel family at least twice a year. After eight years at Genigraphics, I moved into desktop publishing with Eastman Kodak's Electronic Printing Systems (KEPS) division where I was the Color Management and Prepress Specialist, selling electronic prepress systems that used a CIE-UVL color system (similar to Photoshop's LAB color space). I had unlimited access to Kodak's evolving technology, including PhotoCD, digital SLR cameras, Light Valve Technology (LVT) film recorders, and the Approval high-end digital prepress proofing systems use by many of the West coast's largest printing companies. Desktop publishing was in its infancy and Adobe Photoshop was at version 1.2.
Around the same time I also discovered the world wide web, and after surfing around for an hour, realized that I needed a web site. So I learned HTML from a book and created my fist web site in 1994, which eventually grew to be UnderWatercolours.com and UWCStock.com which together currently average 28,000 unique visitors each month. While at Kodak I also got a taste of international travel visiting Australia, Hong Kong and other countries in Asia to present desktop publishing and color management to Kodak employees and dealers. This travel offered interesting side-trip opportunities, all dive related of course. I soon realized that my 40 hour work week obligation to Kodak was making a dent in my true love of diving and quest for underwater photo opportunities.
Between then and now I created around 70 original web sites, produced 15 CD ROMs, created hundreds of 360 panoramic movies and shot thousands of photos both above water and below. I've traveled to many fantastic dive destinations including Cozumel, Galapagos, Fiji, Palau, Truk, Indonesia, Kosrae, Africa, the Virgin Islands, Tonga, Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica and Australia, some of these places many times. I still love technology and never tire of the rapid changes and the challenges they present. I also love statistics and tracking what works and what doesn't. I am currently working on a 12-month project evaluating various methods of internet and print advertising to determine where advertising dollars are best spent, both for my own companies and for my clients. Other projects include this web site, which has been a fun and totally consuming endeavor. What you see here today is just the tip of the iceberg. Sharing is fun and this is such a great medium for doing it.
I'm a PADI Divemaster and I do as much California diving as time allows but also love to ski and sail. I once heard Tom Hopkins (a motivational speaker) say that successful people always make sure that every hour of their day is productive. That statement stuck with me and I've had no problems sticking to that schedule. I also find naps and scuba diving to be very productive and believe that if something isn't fun, then its not worth doing. So I hope you find this web site not only educational and informative, but fun and motivating. |
In 1982 (long before the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh) I saw an informal demonstration of a computer graphics workstation. From that moment on, I knew that computer graphics was my future. A month later I was hired as a Computer Graphic Artist Trainee with Genigraphics Corporation. During this time I learned about the art of presentation, creating shows for many of the largest ad agencies and corporations in Southern California. I and a handful of other artists, created artistic graphics on these simple vector-based graphics systems. I got published often and became known as "the Geni artist who created the red car". I never tired of working with bleeding-edge technology and I moved through the ranks, joining the equipment sales force, and eventually handling all the Genigraphics accounts in the Western US. 
Using the Kodak prepress technology, I did all the image preparation and prepress work (color correction of over 1400 images) for the book "Tropical Pacific Invertebrates" published by Coral Reef Press. This was the first book ever published using Kodak PhotoCD instead of traditional scanners. Later I produced two editions of the book in CD ROM format, still available today from Amazon.com. All this was done on a 33 MHz Quadra 950 with 128K of memory. I was also fortunate to be invited to assist Coral Reef Research Foundation in several research and collection trips in Africa and the Philippines.
I started doing a lot more diving and took pictures whenever I could. I wasn't very good with my Nikonos V, but I thought I was, so I decided to make this new addiction tax-deductible by designing a line of blank note cards using several of my favorite underwater shots. The photos were manipulated in Photoshop using Gallery Effects to make them look like a watercolor painting. With my line of 20 cards Under WatercoloursTM was born.
In 1995 I gave up my corporate career to make Under Watercolours a full time commitment. For nine months I consulted with Photomation Photo Lab as the Sales Manager and Technical Consultant to bring the lab and its team up to speed on digital imaging and the future of digital in the professional lab. Then I headed to Fiji to begin one of my first productions, the Fiji Islands CD ROM, which I single-handedly authored, designed, produced, published and distributed. In 2000 the CD's first edition was awarded the prestigious Summit Creative Award, competing against the work done by creative teams from 20-million-dollar design firms and agencies. By its second edition more than 8000 copies had been distributed worldwide.
In my spare time (ha!) I'm also designing a line of jewelry, made in Bali, which will be available at fine department stores and online.