As usual, Novembers Members Gallery will proceed Novembers “Photographers Forum” on the same evening. This month we have Granger Benson with prints and Dennis Govoni with digital.
Granger Benson – Biography
Granger is a retired physician and current small business owner who joined NVPS in 2013, soon after obtaining his first DSLR camera. Throughout his life he has enjoyed capturing family moments and travel scenes. However, he only recently began to think about the factors that distinguish a creative and compelling image from a pleasing snapshot. Whatever he has learned about photography he has acquired through self-study, the two Nature Visions events he has attended and NVPS meetings. The impressive quality of images produced by NVPS members has been a major source of inspiration for him. He regards himself as an advanced beginner.
So far, Granger’s experience has mainly extended to landscapes, travel photography, close-up and macro, HDR, some street photography and occasional portraiture. He enjoys exploring different styles, techniques and subject matter and has yet to discover a favorite. He has only grudgingly surrendered to photography’s less exhilarating aspects such as arising at unconscionably early hours, assuming awkward body postures and lugging around heavy equipment.
Granger most often shoots with his Canon 6D and almost exclusively uses the manual mode and the raw image format. In contrast to many photographers who prefer to spend time in shooting rather than post-processing, Granger enjoys the computer as much as the camera. Due to an early introduction to Photoshop, it remains his preferred graphics editor, supplemented by Adobe’s Camera Raw plugin, Adobe Bridge and the Google Nik collection.
Dennis Govoni – Biography
Dennis began his photographic journey in 1964 while an undergraduate at Marietta College in Ohio. His motivation was, at first, his realization that the final exam in a course on plant identification would be the identification of 100 plants from Kodachrome slides projected during the exam. He felt he could gain an edge by following the professor around and photographing behind him. So he bought a second-hand 35mm camera for $65.00 (a lot for an undergraduate back then) and has not put one down since.
After graduate school, he took a professorship at Virginia Wesleyan College and during a two week period in January, known as the “January Term” , he often offered various courses in photography starting with black and white and eventually moving towards color photography using the then innovative technology known as the “Cibachrome Method”, a direct positive-to- positive color print approach.
Dennis began as a Nikon user, but moved to digital in 1999 with a Kodak DC265 (1.6MP) and finally to Canon in 2005 because they offered the first DSLR in the consumer price range (Rebel). He now has an insane amount of camera gear but shoots primarily with a Canon 1DX and 7D Mark II. Depending on subject, he uses macro lenses, super telephotos and wide angles.
Now retired for five years, Dennis continues to spend time perfecting his macro photography, but has also expanded into general landscape, wildlife and even non-nature subjects. Dennis’ approach is to try and look for interesting details in a subject (influenced by his biology and botany background). It is the role of light quality in revealing those details that interests him the most.
While not a professional by any means, his work has appeared in a children’s book series on nature and in publications such as Photography Week. He is also an active Getty Image contributor where his images have been used by the BBC, The Weather Channel, Bank of America and other enterprises. He has also taught in George Mason’s OLLI Program (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) as the lead for their “The Art of Photography” Series.
Dennis has been a member of NVPS for about six years and was a co-coordinator of the Education and Training with Roger Lancaster for two years. He is now involved with Nature Visions as the Vendor Manager.
His photos can be found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dngovoni/ as well as at: http://botanist.dyndns.org:8081/
