Our artwork is a love story, a symbiotic relationship between painting and photography. It started when two people fell in love then inspired each other to create, combigning their talents to create a harmonic blend of photography and paint.  Mike's photography of landscapes, captures the relationships of water, land, trees and skies and how they harmonically blend to become a peaceful scene. Then Patty blends her paint to match the colors in mike's photographs and paints in such a photo-realistic technique, it's herd to tell where one ends and the other begins. Mike and Patty met on a blind date in June of 1997 and married in May of 1998.  Prior to their meeting Mike had never done anything professionally as a photographer, Patty had never done anything professionally as an artist or painter. They are both self taught and neither one had any confidence in their own abilities as artists.  It wasn't until the two met, encouraged and inspired each other that their talents began to soar.  They both feel lucky to have the other and are soul mates in every since of the word.  They have been together for eleven years now and when they go out people still ask if they are newlyweds.  They have come together, nurturing and inspiring each other to creative new heights with their previously unused artistic abilities.  They are both self taught artists that did not have any confidence in their artistic abilities.  Mike had never done anything professionally as a photographer and Patty had never done anything professionally as an artist or painter.  Mike loves to work with wood and is an avid landscape photographer.  Patty has been drawing since childhood and had recently taken up painting.  The two combine their talents now to create a seamless collaboration of photography and painting.  Mike takes photos of his favorite places, streams, waterfalls, mountains and trees.  He then hand makes a frame from wood.  Patty, using acrylic paint, hand paints the frame to look like a larger extension of the photo.   Patty mixes her paint colors so exactly and paints with such photo-realistic detail the final product looks like one large three dimensional picture that you could just walk into.  All of Patty’s painting is done free-hand without a larger photograph to look at or work from.  The effect is deceiving to the eye, you cannot tell where the photo ends and the painting begins.  It’s easy to see by how closely these two mediums come together that these two artists are soul mates.   The two now make their living traveling around the country selling their creations at art shows.  Patty gave up her massage clients after the first year and Mike sold his carpet cleaning business after the second year of doing shows.  They now work together, travel together and are around each other almost 24-7.  They are constantly holding hands, laughing and making each other smile.  They have won numerous awards for their work at art shows across the country.  Their works are held in private collections all over the world.  They have been approached by numerous galleries that want to sell their work but Patty cannot keep up with demand from what they sell at art shows.  So the only place you can buy one of the Albin’s creations is directly from them.  The typical waiting time for one of their pieces is between four to six months.   We get emails from people we have met at art shows that tell us how much we have inspired them to new relationships and new careers.