Untitled Document

The Newsletter of the Northern Virginia Photographic Society

Note: You can click on the above links to go directly to the article; or you can scroll through the entire newsletter. You can also print the entire newsletter.

Frank Lavelle has a remarkable ability to capture the emotion of people in his photographs, such as "Proud Father" & "Three Guys" from Sicily and Cuba's "Yellow Flower" [which does not depict a plant], "Red" & "Blue". In fact, the Maine Photographic Workshops named Frank's workshop, "The Expressive Photograph".

Frank Lavelle is a very talented, full-time working commercial photographer and professor/ teacher of photography. He earned an MFA in Photography at the University of Delaware and has been a photographer most of his adult life and a photography educator for the past 30 years. He has taught all levels of black & white and color photography, as well as alternative printing and specialty courses at colleges & art schools [including the Corcoran School of Art, Univ. of Delaware, Trinity College, The Smithsonian, & Northern Virginia Community College]. Frank also teaches at nationally recognized photo workshops [including, the Maine Photographic Workshops, Palm Beach Photo Workshops, The Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging, and Santa Fe Photographic Workshops]. He leads photo workshops to Ireland, Italy and Morocco. For 25 years, Frank was Director of Photographic Education for the Smithsonian Associates, where he coordinated a program of 85 courses per year, selected & managed 10 faculty members, produced the curriculum and taught courses.

Frank has worked continuously in the commercial field-- photographing portraits, kings and queens, fashion, architecture, products, events, public relation work, annual reports, press conferences, dance & theater productions, and just about anything else, even weddings!

All the while, he has continued to photograph in the USA & abroad, participated in professional development workshops and exhibited regularly at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery in DC & elsewhere.
His photography has used many formats, including pinhole, plastic cameras, 35mm, panoramic, medium format and view cameras. He has printed with many darkroom processes, including traditional black & white, platinum, palladium, gum bichromate, cyanotype, type C color----and, now, the Photoshop digital darkroom.

We anticipate a dinner at Chili's, but his final schedule details are not yet firm. Happy Holidays to all.

Since the New Year is now upon us, I’m sure many of us have made resolutions to eat better, exercise, be more thoughtful, etc. etc. Perhaps you made a resolution to improve your photography in the coming year, we’ll I can’t help you with the eating and exercise, but allow me to provide some suggestions on improving you Photography in 2008.

One of the things I did in 2007 that had an amazing impact on my images was taking a week long photographic workshop with Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. This was an incredible experience for a number of reasons, not only were the instructors world class master craftsmen, but it’s the first time in my life I spent an entire week spending every waking hour working on photography. This type of focus can really take you up a notch just from the practice alone. Add a quality instructor or two on top of that, and you might make some substantial steps forward in your work.

Another thing that has substantially improved my work is using manual focus almost 100% of the time. Autofocus just doesn’t provide the creative control or accuracy I require in my images. While I have rather poor vision I still can focus better than my camera can. I’ll bet you can too if you just take the training wheels off and stop using autofocus. Particularly if you are not taking action shots, manual focus will result in many more images in proper focus than if you use autofocus.

Certainly adding stability to your camera like with a sturdy tripod complimented with a shutter release cable will ensure crisp images with little blur from handholding your camera. I’m sure you’ve heard this a hundred times, and you might even occasionally bring your tripod along. The tripod and shutter release will encourage you to slow down and examine the view before taking the image. Taking your time when composing your image will also prevent you from wishing you had shot the image correctly later on, or spending tedious time working with Photoshop correcting carless mistakes.

Of course spending some time with NVPS in 2008 will help your images also. Educational events, fabulous field trips, and exhibition opportunities are just a few of the items NVPS offers that can help you either as a new photographer learning the ropes, or an experienced photographer rededicating themselves.

In review, here’s the short list for some possible improvements in your photography in 2008.

May the New Year bring us all peace and prosperity filled with beautiful images in sharp focus.

“The best place to photograph is where ever you are” – Freeman Patterson
“The best camera you can ever have is the one you have with you” – Unknown

The judge for the NVPS OPEN competition to be held JANUARY 22, 2008*, will be C.A. (Chuck) Veatch , nationally respected nature photographer, author and frequent lecturer on photography and visual design. He has also been a guest curator for the Greater Reston Arts Center where he serves on the Board of Directors.

As a fly fisherman and lover of nature, Chuck began photographing the beautiful scenes around him from the Florida Keys to the Outback of Alaska. Photography soon became his passion, and by 1999, his first book, The Nature of Reston, about the fauna and flora of this celebrated "new town" in Virginia was published. (Chuck has been deeply involved in all aspects of the development of Reston, VA since its inception over 40 years ago). His creative images have appeared in many publications and exhibits including a cover story in Nature's Best Magazine in 2003 which took an artistic look at the landscape of the American Southwest. Currently, as a vice president of Nature's Best Publishing which produces Nature's Best Magazine, he participates in the day to day operations, including editorial content and image selection.

Chuck serves on several nonprofit boards related to the environment including the Fairfax County Parks Foundation, the Endowment for the National Wildlife Federation and the Advisory Board for the Potomac Conservancy. He was a past president of the Northern Virginia Photographic Society and a two time attendee at Freeman Patterson workshops in Canada.

* PLEASE NOTE THAT SINCE NEW YEAR'S DAY 2008 WILL FALL ON THE FIRST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH, THE JANUARY COMPETITION MEETING AT NVPS WILL SUBSEQUENTLY MOVE TO THE FOURTH TUESDAY WHICH IS JANUARY 22, 2008.

The above images won 1st place in their respective categories in the December Competition. A larger version can be seen by clicking on each image.

Amie Tannenbaum VP Competitions
717-398-9705
miladyamie@aol.com

We've now completed three competitions since calibrating our computers for the projector and I believe that we have a stable, repeatable and quality projection capability. At the December Workshop we took some time to test a newly calibrated replacement laptop computer. We were able to connect both the old and new laptop to the projector simultaneously and switch between the two, projecting the same images with both. We used calibration targets and some of the November competition images as test subjects. The differences between the old laptop and new laptop were minimal, with all of us having difficulty identifying which computer was in use at any given time. This new laptop was slated to be used for the competition in December but differences in the way that integers are calculated between Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Office XP and Office 2007 meant that the competition software was miscalculating the number of awards. Many thanks to Scott Musson for providing a modern and highly capable laptop for the club's use. The competition software should be updated to address the calculation bug in time for January's competition.

The projector's color gamut is slightly smaller than the standard sRGB color gamut as seen in the comparison in Illustration 1. The grey outline is the sRGB color space, the colored areas are the colors that the projector is capable of producing.

Because of this difference in color gamut, heavily saturated colors will tend to project slightly flatter on the screen, and blacks will tend to muddy down to a single color. Using the image in Illustration 2 as an example, the blacks in the Kodak CYM chart (vertical greyscale strip on the right of the image) from 15 – 20 all appear to be identical.

What this means is that an image that has good detail in the shadow areas, probably will not when projected. However, an image with good detail in the highlight areas probably will have good detail when projected. When properly configured, the projector produces excellent contrast in the highlights, although it appears to have a very slight green cast in the whites that has not been corrected through calibration.

We have generated an ICC profile for the projector that can be used for “soft proofing” images that are being entered in competition. We hope to make the profile available on the website in the near future, but for the time being, please email me and I will provide the profile as an email attachment, along with details on where to copy the profile in order to be able to use it from Photoshop CS2/3.

Now that the equipment is calibrated and the configuration for the projector is documented, we will continue to calibrate approximately monthly. If there are significant changes to the profile that has been provided we will update the profile and make an announcement in FotoFax.

As always, if anyone has any questions, comments or concerns about color calibration or the configuration of the NVPS digital projection equipment, please feel free to contact me.

The field trip on January 26 will be a visit to the Joseph Miller Center for the Photographic Arts. Participants will have an opportunity to carefully examine the photographs in the permanent collection and ask questions about them. There will be an opportunity to shoot still life images in Joe's studio, taking advantage of light from stain glass windows. Those who wish to shoot in the studio should bring a camera, tripod and props if desired. For those interested in outdoor nature photography there are woods, a stream, and a pond on the property.

We will car pool to the Center from the Dunn Loring Fire Station, leaving promptly at 1:15 pm. Please park along the street or at the school next door, since there may be other activities scheduled at the fire station.

To get to Joe's center, proceed west on Route 66 and take exit 47B, Route 234. The sign says Manassas National Battlefield Park. Proceed six miles (the first couple miles are through the Battlefield) and turn left onto Catharpin Road (3/4 mile after you pass through the little village of Catharpin consisting of Alveys grocery store, an EXXON gas station, a nursery, and a post office). After turning left onto Catharpin Road proceed 4/10 mile and turn left into a gravel driveway alongside a stone mailbox. Follow the long gravel driveway back to the Center at the top of the hill.

You can sign up at a club meeting, by e-mailing me at tek7@cox.net or by calling me at (703) 938-6391 most evenings. Although email is preferred, if urgent call my blackberry (day) or cell (eves) at (571) 201-0497 and (571) 217-1010 respectively.

Teresa Klinkosz
Field Trips Coordinator
703-938-6391 (H)
(571) 201-0497(Day Cell)
(571) 217-1010 (Eve. Cell)
Preferred: tek7@cox.net

January 29, 2008

Oleg Ovolons - Digital Projection

Oleg moved to the USA from St. Petersburg, Russia, 8 years ago. Photography became his hobby 6 years ago, when he received a Nikon N65 camera as a birthday present from friends. Since then he has been trying with varying success to pursue this hobby while serving as Director of Quality Assurance at an internet development company. Nights are the usual time left for photography. That is why Oleg experiments mostly with artificial light and still life. Although abstract glass still life is what others like about his photos, people are the subject that attracts Oleg the most. Oleg learns photography by reading books, analyzing masterpieces of famous photographers, and interacting with the internet photo community.

Bob and Willa Friedman have been actively photographing for the last three or four years. Bob had a darkroom when he was growing up, while Willa came to photography very suddenly after they were married. After graduating from college, Willa was an instructor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She was given a choice of several assignments as a summer project. These included cleaning small animal cages and filing old paperwork. One choice was photographing wildlife in city parks. She chose the photography and was handed an SLR camera and light meter. Over the following weekend, Bob taught her enough to have a photo published in a fourth grade social studies textbook.

Bob continued to pursue his hobby with a dark room in their home, and supported the hobby by photographing weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. Eventually with pressures of work and children, the darkroom became a storage closet.

As they approached retirement, they both drifted back into photography and have taken courses in the basics of photography as well as several workshops, most recently in Kingston, New Brunswick with Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. They continue to study Photoshop with Eliot Cohen. Willa and Bob are both shooting digitally and use Nikon equipment. They do their own printing on an Epson Photographic printer. They have been members of NVPS for three years.

Both have had photographs juried into the Meadowlark Photo Expo. They have also exhibited at Hendry House in Arlington, VA and the Fairfax County Government Center. Willa has a photograph in the permanent collection of the Joseph Miller Center for the Photographic Arts.

Bob shoots scenery, wildlife and the grandchildren. Willa tends to include architecture, city life and wild flowers as well. A selection of their images may be seen on their website, www.willaandbobphotography.com.

Carl Zelman will lead the January 15 workshop on proper matting techniques. Carl is a past NVPS president and retired frame and matting shop owner. This is a very important workshop, particularly for novices just starting to compete or show their matted images. Carl will show us how to cut the perfect mat and a wide variety of related items. He will discuss and demonstrate the relative advantages of different kinds of mat board, proper backing, print location, mounting of prints, and other important aspects of a matting project. He will also discuss various styles of mat cutters ranging from the simplest hand-held mat cutter to models with features that make the job much easier. If you have your own special matting tools or techniques, you should feel free to bring them for discussion. As usual, the workshop will be at the Dunn Loring Fire Station starting at 7:30 PM.

Repeat programs of Photographers of Northern Virginia are now being shown on a regular basis on Fairfax Public Access Channel 30 every Monday at 3:30 p.m. and every Friday at 3 p.m. They will no longer be shown on Channel 10.

Photography as Art Workshop
Joseph Miller

Today we are awash in a tsunami of images. Modern technology ensures that our images will be sharp and correctly exposed and for many photographers that is enough? But the one thing that technology cannot guarantee is soul -- an image that tugs at the heartstrings of mood, feeling and emotion. A photograph to be considered art should be felt as well as seen.

This two-session workshop (program and presentation) looks at photography as art. The program session will be Sunday, February 24, 2008, from 2:00 - 4:00 PM and the presentation session will be March 30, 2008, from 2:00 - 5:00 PM. [Note, this is an added session. The original session for February 17 and March 16 were filled within a week. If interested, don't dally. -Editor.]

There will be two assignments given at the program session. The first assignment will be for each participant to e-mail me by March 2, his/her opinion of "when is photography art?" That may be done in a sentence, a paragraph, a page, or pages. The second assignment will be for each participant to show at the presentation session on March 30, three matted prints he/she considers to be art and why. Every participant is required to do these two assignments; there are no exceptions. The cost will be $40 for the two sessions. There will be a limit of 12 participants. The program will be held at the Joseph Miller Center for the Photographic Arts in Gainesville Virginia.

The Fairfax County Government Center has invited all photographers who have previously been juried into the Meadowlark Nature Photography Expo to join in a group show starting in January 5. This show will help promote the 2008 Meadowlark Photo Expo.

The show will be hung on January 5, 2008. The exhibit will be on display for three months.

Each photo must be framed in a simple frame. We need the following information for each photo:

Printed cards with this information will be supplied after the hanging.

You will need to take down and removing your photo at the end of the show on April 5, 2008.

We will have an opening reception with refreshments. The date is still to be
determined.

If you have images that have been juried into previous Meadowlark Expos and would like to participate, please email me the name of the photo as soon as possible.

Tickets for Frans Lanting’s keynote speech on February 8 at the Tysons Corner Marriott will be sold at NVPS meetings and are available on line at the Meadowlark website. The price is $25.00, cash or check at the meetings or by charge on line.

Photographs for Meadowlark will be collected at NVPS meetings on January 8 and January 15. Judging will be on January 19. Please see the website for further information concerning matting, sizes, subject matter, etc. www.meadowlarkphotoexpo.org.

We need volunteers to help at Expo. NVPS is responsible for collecting tickets for the speakers, assisting in seating the audience, assisting the speakers with audio visual set up, and introducing the speakers. If you are comfortable with slide projectors and digital projection please help us. Some of the speakers will be using unfamiliar borrowed equipment and will need assistance.

If you are entering photographs, please be prepared to volunteer to help. We are asking for about 15 minutes of your time.

The theme for the 2008 People's Choice contest is Dogwoods. There are no restrictions on where the photograph may be taken. No hand of man is allowed. Each club may submit one photograph. It is up to each club to determine how to select their submission.

If you have an entry, please bring it to the second meeting in January (January 15th). We will put out all of the entries at the start of the workshop meeting and all members attending the meeting will have the opportunity to vote. All entries must be matted in accordance with the Meadowlark expo rules.

The six photographs will be voted on by the persons attending the Meadowlark Expo on Saturday, February 9th and the winner will be announced at the reception, Saturday evening, February 9.

All participants in the People's Choice Contest must be willing to allow the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA) to use their photograph for promotional purposes.

If you have any questions, email me at Willa-f@cox.net or call me at 703-978-7937.

Enter the Second Annual Washington Gardener Photo Contest and have a chance of getting your winning images published, too! The photos can be taken in your own backyard, a nearby public garden, or while visiting friends and family in their local gardens.

The closing date of the 6th Holland International Image Circuit 2008 is January 31st 2008. You can download the entry form at http://www.hollandcircuit.nl

Well known nature photographer, John Shaw, will present two seminars in Baltimore on April 12-13. The first day is devoted to Nature Photography. The second day covers Digital Photography and Digital Workflow. Cost is $225 for the entire weekend or $160 for one day. More information can be found at the Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris website: http://www.photosafaris.com.

Details about each workshop (and photo galleries) can be found at www.CoreyHilz.com in the “Instruction” section. Feel free to contact Corey with any questions: corey@coreyhilz.com or 703.473.4618

10% discount for repeat participants 10% discount for camera club members To sign up for a Va Photo Safari go to www.vasafaris.com. Jack Nevitt & Alan DeFelice.

Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz Exhibits at the Corcoran Gallery Ends in January

January is the last chance to see an exhibit of Ansel Adams works including some famous and some rarely-exhibited prints at the Corcoran Gallery from September 15, 2007 to January 27, 2008. Her professional work along with some of Annie Leibovitz's personal photographs will be on display from October 13, 2007 to January 13, 2008. Tickets are required. Visit the Corcoran website ( http://www.corcoran.org/index.asp) for further information.

Costa Rica awaits, come photograph BATS, birds and more with Wildlife Photo Tours in 2008. Costa Rica is home to all three species of Vampire bats and we hope to photograph all three. Additionally, Costa Rica is home to some of the most magnificent birds on the planet! Other tours for 2008 include Bosque del Apache, Aransas, TX for Whooping Cranes, and bats and venomous reptiles in Arizona and New Mexico. Visit our website at www.wildlifephototour.com for additional tour information.

Meetings are held on the 2nd & 4th Thursdays at 7:00 pm at theCascades Library (aka Eastern Regional Library) or as indicated.

Manassas Warrenton Camera Club
Contact: Gene Wells (703) 330-5835 or ewellsjr@verizon.net
Website: www.mwcc-photo.org .
Meetings: Held on the 1st and 3rd Thur. at 7:30 pm, Manassas City Hall, Old Town Manassas, or as indicated.
Program:    January 4, 2008 - Shelley Miller - Are We Overmanaging Our Printing?
Competition: January 18, 2008 - Category: Food/Beverage, Judge TBA

McLean Photography Club
Contact: Bruce Copping at (703) 725-9331 or bcopping@gmail.com
Website: www.mcleanphoto.org.
Meetings: Held on the 2nd Wed. at 7:30 pm (meet & greet at 7:15 pm), at the McLean Community Center, or as indicated.
Program:   Jan. 10th -- Ian Plant will be presenting some of his favorite wildlife and natural landscape images from his incredible three-year journey photographing the Chesapeake Bay, and will have copies of his book available.
Competition: February 14

Reston Photographic Society
Contact: Ellis Rosenberg at 703-855-4008 or erosenberg@cox.net
Website: www.leagueofrestonartists.org
Meetings: Held the 2nd Monday of the month, Jan 14th, 7:30-9:30 pm at the Reston Community Center –  Hunters Woods

Program: Jack Nevitt and Alan DeFelice from Virginia Digital Safaris will be giving a presentation on Bird Photography Tips and Techniques

Competition: Collection of prints for Meadowlark judging and selection of the RPS Peoples Choice Entry

Vienna Photographic Society
Contact: Mary Jane Fish at (703) 281-9743 or fishsfotos@aol.com or Warren Standley at (540) 635-6721 or editor@vps-va.org .
Website: www.vps-va.org
Meetings: Held on the 1st and 3rd Wed. at 7:30 pm in the main lecture hall of the Thoreau Middle School, 2505 Cedar Lane, Vienna, VA.
Program: January 2, Corey Hilz will present ” Exploring the Process of Selecting a Subject and Composition”.
Competition: January 16, with Josh Taylor as judge.
Field Trip: Saturday, January 26, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., “Riding the Rails”… a photo safari of low-light and mixed-light photography along the Metro system guided by E. David Luria… for more information, contact Terry Goplerud at terrygoplerud@yahoo.com.

Self-Improvement Outing: Saturday, January 12, the subject this month is “Texture”… for more information contact Dan Feighery at dandj_ffx_va@cox.net