Jeff Hancock (Digital)
As a Navy brat, Jeff grew up in many places in the U.S. and overseas. It was in Japan where he was given his first camera, a point and shoot 35mm. When he moved to Hawaii, he was asked to choose an art elective in high school. He chose photography over glass blowing in 1987 and the rest is history. He shot for the newspaper, the yearbook, and was president of the photography club. His first professional gig was for a surfer who paid him $40 for a roll of black and white.
Jeff’s been a member of NVPS since 2008. He took over as digital projectionist in 2010 and added his own flair to the job, keeping the announcements part of the meeting from becoming a snooze fest with visual jokes and quick Google fingers.
Jeff’s had a lot of side jobs in photography. Some of the highlights include Cadillac Track day events, a Rolling Thunder motorcycle tour, Santa Claus visit to an adoption agency, a Pilates instructor, a state delegate campaign appearance, a one-year old’s birthday party, and a wedding, though he doesn’t make a habit of it. His primary customer since 2011 is Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, the subject of his portfolio project last year, and other city of Alexandria museums. He’s spent so much time in Alexandria that he’s on a first name basis with Alison, Mayor Silverberg.
When he’s not shooting a paid gig, Jeff has wide photographic interests. He’ll take his camera to anything he or his family are doing. He also seeks out wildlife, nature, motorsports, still lives, in- camera abstracts, drones, family photos, fireworks, you name it.
Jeff processes primarily in Lightroom, though he’ll grudgingly hit the “edit in Photoshop” menu item if he really has to. He suspects he’ll spend more time there now that he has a backdrop set with a green screen.
Jeff’s has been published in the Alexandria Gazette, the Huffington Post, and dcist.com. His work has been recognized in Joseph Miller’s Abstract exhibit and Nature Visions Expo.
Stan Bysshe (Print)
Although Stan has been taking pictures since the early seventies, it wasn’t until the take-off of digital photography that he became passionate about the photographic process. It has been a slow, sometimes painful and certainly continuous learning process. But with retirement, it beat the heck out of playing golf. Like many of you, in the film days, he dabbled in the darkroom, however there just wasn’t time to become a photographer. Now that he has the time, Stan enjoys planning photo shoots, thinking about how to make an image and then processing it, and finally printing it. For him, the ultimate endpoint for a photograph is the print. However he still doesn’t consider himself completely knowledgeable about any of those steps; there is always something new to learn.
The biggest influence on Stan’s photography has been the natural world, especially marine reef ecology. He has been a certified scuba diver for forty-five years and stopped logging dives after two thousand. For the past three decades he rarely dove without a camera and seldom took images unless he was underwater. So he supported his habit by photographing and writing for dive magazines, dive shops and tourist boards. More recently however, maintaining and traveling with dive gear, underwater housings and strobes as well as cameras simply lost its glamour. So about five years ago he decided to explore the natural world on land. That meant learning about new habitats and animal behaviors and photographing without flash. Not surprisingly, birds in flight caught his eye. They aren’t that different from fish on a reef! This has lead to studying capturing subjects in motion.
Stan has mostly shot with Nikon, but truly has no preference, other than he is now trapped by the lenses he owns. It’s not the camera! Most of his post-processing initially was with Aperture and now Lightroom. He is Photoshop illiterate; another project in the making. However with photographing nature, processing takes a backseat to an image that allows the subject in its environment to be the art. Stan prints with a ten year old Epson Stylus Pro 3800, took a mat cutting course and watched Bob and Willa intently, but has now found it easier to order precut mats and recycle them as he mounts prints for exhibit.
The prints were chosen simply because they were images that he enjoyed taking, either because of the challenge or the memorable location. The underwater images were all published at one point but have never been printed before.
