Light, Shadow, Form, and Texture

For those of you who might be planning to come to my reception at the Blanche Ames Gallery in Frederick this Sunday, we will be rescheduling in light of the snow forecast fo this weekend. We will have the reception on February 21 with the scheduled presentation to follow the same day. Again,the gallery is at the site of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation 4880 Elmer Derr Road, Frederick, MD. For more about the exhibit, see the previous blog entry.

Two Other Events

I am participating in the ArtBerkeley exhibit in the Dunn Building in Martinsburg February 5 through March 19. The reception for this exhibit will be Saturday, February 13 from 1-5pm. See www.artberkeley.org.

I am also participating in the second phase exhibit for the Jefferson County Photography Project. The exhibit will be in the Jean Heiler Gallery at the Old Opera House in Charles Town, WV. The Heiler Gallery is in the basement of the theatre and the work is displayed for the theatre patrons to view before the show and during intermission. The exhibit opens February 5 with the opening of the play “Moonlight and Magnolias”. Given the weather, however, a call to the theatre would be a good idea. www.oldoperahouse.org.

After the show closes at the Old Opera House, the exhibit will move to the Old Firehouse Gallery and Visitors Center at 108 North George Street in Charles Town. A reception is planned for Fridya evening from 6-8pm, February 19. More information about the project is at www.ahajc.org/events.htm.

I hope to see you at one of these events.

Posted in Photography

First of all, Happy New Year to all. As I look forward to 2010, I am hopeful that it will be another year of technical and creative progress.

Technical and creative progress by itself is satisfying, but I also wish to share the results of that progress with others while generating the financial resources to continue the progress. So starting this month,  I will be offering a “Featured Image of the Month” with a special print price for that month.

Dark Hollow Falls, Shenandoah National Park (Click to purchase)

For my first offering, I selected an image captured at Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park in October, 2007.  I hiked down a long path to get to the falls and was somewhat disappointed in how little water was flowing. At the time the region was struggling with a pretty serious drought.

However, I was there so I started looking for images. What attracted me to this scene was the way the water flowed so smoothly through an otherwise chaotic environment. The path of the water provided a path for the eye to wander either side of the fall, taking in all of the details.

The image will be printed on 100% cotton rag fine art paper using an Epson printer using archival pigment inks. The print will be mounted in a 12×16 acid free rag mat and I will hand sign the print and the mat.

The price for the matted print is $35.00 plus $7.50 for shipping. If you would like to purchase a print, please click here or on the image above.

If you like this image, this is a chance to get a print a substantial savings over what it would be priced in a gallery.

If you are not already on my email list, you can sign up here.

Stay tuned for more news.

Posted in Photography

I guess it’s obligatory that everyone stop at the end of the year to reflect on the year past and look ahead to the new year. For me, that process involved looking through the images that I created in 2009 and selecting some of my favorites, which might or might not suggest where I will go in 2010.

All in all I feel that the past year has been quite productive. Several trips into DC, a day in Pittsburgh, the workshop in Maine, and two shoots at the National Cathedral were some of the highlights. Although this selection is predominantly black and white, there are also a few color shots.

Click on the image to see the full "2009 Favorites" gallery.

Aside from some successful images, I learned a lot in the past year. The workshops with Tillman Crane and Bruce Barnbaum were enjoyable and exposed me to some really fine work by the other participants as well as insights from Tillman and Bruce. I’ve worked on refining my digital post processing and printing techniques and I think I have made some good progress on that. I am looking forward to applying that knowledge in the coming year.

Picking one favorite for the year is just about impossible, so I’m not going to try. But one of the images in the “Favorites” collection was a recent color shot that I think  justifies completely my decision a few months ago to purchase a Canon G11 camera. In spite of this being classed as a “point and shoot” amateur camera, it is capable of very nice images. This color shot prints very well up to 16×20.

The reason I highlight this image is that I think it may point to a somewhat different direction for me in the coming year. It’s not that I will stop shooting architecture, but I love the mix of textures and colors in this image and I hope to explore more “nature detail” images in the coming year.

So that’s it for 2009. I’m looking forward to 2010 and I hope to have a chance to meet some of you at an exhibit or gallery reception.

For now, here’s wishing everyone a very Happy and Safe New Year.

Posted in Photography

I decided a while back to try SmugMug for my online galleries. The main reason is that updating the galleries with new work is just so much easier. With ‘home-made’ galleries on my site, if I want to add one or more new images to an existing gallery, I have to totally generate the gallery from scratch. With SmugMug it’s simply a matter of uploading the file and telling the program which gallery to put it in. Creating new galleries and categories are a snap, too.

I have finally switched everything over added a couple of new galleries.

In the ‘Portfolios‘ category, I added an expanded gallery of the graffiti images from the Quincy Quarry that were the source of my September  “21st Century Hieroglyphics” exhibit in Hagerstown

Click on the image to view the gallery.

I have been doing some commissioned architectural photography and I have some examples of that work:

Click on the image to see the gallery.

So far I have been very happy with the way Smugmug works. It’s easy to set up galleries and is very flexible and customizable.

Here’s a small commercial. If you try Smugmug and decide to pay for the service (as little as $35/year) you can save $5 by entering my referral code:

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in the appropriate box on the signup form. (Disclosure: it also earns me a credit for my account.)

Posted in Photography

Last weekend was a part of a six day marathon of sorts where I put 900 miles on my car over six days.

Three of those days were spent with Bruce Barnbaum (www.barnbaum.com) in his “Art of Seeing” workshop. Bruce is arguably one of the best black and white photographers and traditional printers in the world today. His 16×20 prints from 4×5 negatives were astounding in their detail and luminosity.

The image “Boulder & Metamorphosis Wave” is just one example and I urge anyone who loves black and white photography to visit Bruce’s web site and explore his portfolios.

The main part of the workshop time involved the participants presenting a portfolio of work for critique and discussion by Bruce and the other participants. This was not an exercise for the faint-hearted. Although overall the feedback was quite positive, I found that some of what I thought were my best images were evaluated as not so interesting even though one of those had been in two juried exhibitions and had won an award in one of the shows.

I was reminded that lacking obvious technical flaws, the process of reviewing, judging or jurying photographs (or any art) is a very subjective process. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, the artist must put it in context and make his or her own decision about how to apply the information.

But overall, I found the feedback very valuable and the good news was that my more recent work got the most positive comments and the consensus was that it was the strongest work in my portfolio.

We also did one field shoot Saturday at dawn at Pennyfield Lock on the C&O Canal. I had to leave the house at 5 am to get to the location by 6:30. I anticipated this with some trepidation with the weather forecast having freeze warnings for that morning.

However, a couple of cups of coffee got me started and when I got to the location I set the camera on a tripod and set off to find photographs. I said that getting up in the middle of the night, going out and freezing my butt off waiting for the sunrise was not my idea of fun. A mist hung over the Potomac as the air warmed fairly quickly and there was little wind. I hardly felt cold and actually enjoyed myself.

Click on the image for more

The six day marathon was completed after two days in Morgantown, WV where Malinda and I attended the 2009 Arts Assembly representing the Berkeley Arts Council.

A fun and interesting few days but I am glad to be home.

Posted in Photography

I’m pleased to report that I have three images accepted for the 2009 Nancy Rodig Regional Juried Art Exhibit at The Arts Centre  in Martinsburg, WV.

One of the images, “The View from the Court“, was also exhibited in the juried members’ exhibit at the Metropolitan Visual Arts Center in Rockville, MD.

The other two were somewhat surprise picks for me. They were both captured on my visit to Pittsburgh last May. The first is an image of the stacks on the site of the old Homestead Steel Works. Today the stacks are almost all that is left from the huge steel mill and they are now surrounded by shopping plazas, restaurants and condominiums.

The second image is a shot from downtown Pittsburgh, where I captured two of the high rise buildings in somewhat of an abstract composition.

The exhibit will be on display at The Arts Centre gallery through October 31 at 300 West King Street in Martinsburg. The opening reception is Saturday, September 12 from 5 – 7 pm.

Posted in Photography