Panoramic and High-resolution Imaging

Max Lyons April 6, 2010

Program

Please join us for a “one of a kind” April Program on Tuesday, April 6 at 7:30 pm, with speaker Max Lyons, who specializes in panoramic and high-resolution imaging.  Max just might have been the first photographer to create a "gigapixel" (1000 megapixel) photographic image.  Max will discuss how these high resolution images are created, and he'll also discuss some of the practicalities of taking this type of image, including equipment, technique, and presentation. 

Max will also discuss several software programs of interest to digital imaging enthusiasts, including PTAssembler (http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm), which is one of the most advanced panoramic image creation programs currently available (and was a program that he wrote himself).  Max will also have some of his high resolution prints available to display at our Program.  He and his wife will be our guests for dinner at Chili’s prior to the meeting, so if you’re interested in joining us for dinner, please rsvp to mary.m.o’neill@gsk.com by Sunday evening, April 4. 

His images can be seen on the following websites:  http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/  www.maxlyons.net and you may gain additional insights from Max’s artists statement: http://www.maxlyons.net/statement.htm.

Biography

Max Lyons was born in Belgium and grew up in England and the United States. After completing graduate studies in Economics, Lyons worked briefly in Washington as a policy analyst before becoming interested in both photography and technology.

Lyons' interest in creating photographs started in the mid 1990s with the advent of consumer-level digital photography. He was inspired by the freedom to experiment that this new technology allowed, and developed interests in both architectural and landscape photography.

By 2000, Lyons was becoming intrigued by the visual impact provided by very large photographic prints. He was influenced by the large format works of film photographers such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth...two artists pushing the limits of large format photography. However, Lyons was also becoming frustrated with a serious limitation of digital photography -- its relatively low resolution, and inability to capture sharp, detailed, large images.

In early 2001, Lyons stumbled upon an innovative solution to the limited resolution of digital cameras, in the form of stitched images—composite images created by joining together multiple images. Lyons realized that this technique could be used to create photographs with much greater clarity than any single digital or film image. Lyons embarked on a multi-year, and ongoing, effort to create a portfolio of incredibly detailed, high resolution images, the results of which will be discussed during his presentation.

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March Competition Images

Below are some images that received a first place award in the March competition. Clicking on one of the pictures will display a larger version.

First place winners in future competitions may be submitted to editor@nvps.org. Submitted photos should have maximum width and height of 1024 pixels and 768 pixels respectively. Images should be sent to editor@nvps.org by the Friday following the competition.

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March Competition Results

Monuments
Location: Gettysburg
Date: April 10, 2010

This field trip is organized in support of the themed competition on May 18th 2010—Monuments, memorials, and statues. Visitors to Gettysburg National Military Park take home a wealth of memories in the many photographs and images taken of the park and national cemetery. The park not only commemorates the war's bloodiest battle with 51,000 casualties and President Abraham Lincoln’s most famous address. It also offers a natural and cultural setting that exhibits the beauty and simplicity of this portion of Pennsylvania

The Self-guided Auto Tour, using the park brochure, can be followed through the park. On the tour route there are numbered stops at highpoints of the battle and visitors can take their time in stopping to view the monuments and field exhibits. Directional tour signs will take you through the park to visit the important highlights of the three-day battle. There is no charge for the Self-guided Auto Tour.

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Great Smokey Mountains
Location: Townsend, TN
Date: Cancelled

Due to lack of reservations and weather-related road closures, NVPS is canceling the Smokey Mountains trip.

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Memorial Weekend & Motorcycle Rolling Thunder
Location: Washington, DC
Date: May 29-30, 2010

Motorcycle Rolling Thunder is an annual motorcycle rally that is held in Washington, DC during the Memorial Day weekend to call for the government's recognition and protection of Prisoners of War (POWs) and those Missing in Action (MIAs). About 400,000 veterans will roar across Washington, DC on their motorcycles as a tribute to American war heroes.

Marilyn Gaizband
Field-Trips@nvps.org
703-560-8365 (H)
703-402-6214 (C)

Tuan Pham
Field-Trips@nvps.org
703-354-3322 (H)

Progression of a Staff Photographer
Anna Gomez
April 27, 2010

Biography

Anna Gomez bought her first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, when she was 13 years old. As an art student, she viewed the camera as another way to express her creativity. At 19, her father brought her back a Canon from a business trip to Japan, and her father-in-law taught her some basics about aperture and shutter speed good exposure. Next in line-a Nikon, which was given up for a nice automatic-focus zoom Olympus after her daughter was born. She wanted to capture those special moments lost during focusing. In 2005 she bought her first hi-end point and shoot digital; once again an Olympus. Then, back to a DSLR in 2007. The Nikon D200 and the switch to digital opened the door to becoming the Staff Photographer for her employer in 2008.

Anna enjoys shooting many different subjects, from landscapes to abstracts.  

Anna is a member of NVPS, and has won numerous awards from the club, including 1st place at the End of the Year Banquet (2008-2009) for the Enhanced Print category. Anna was also juried into the Meadowlark Show in 2009.

Forum Subject 

Grateful for the opportunity to fill the position of Staff Photographer in mid 2008, Anna accepted the challenge while shaking in her boots and asking herself “What was I doing not having had this type of photographic experience or equipment?” Her boss, had faith in her ability, and was not really aware of the limitations she faced compared to the professionals they usually hired. The photography had always been outsourced to professional photographers, using an arsenal of professional equipment. The position has been immeasurable as a photographic learning experience for corporate, event and portrait photography, using less than optimal equipment.

Her first “job” was the organization's largest and most important conference of the year… Anna managed to keep her job and continue to learn and improve. The presentation will include typical photographs taken for conferences, events, Senate hearings, and employee portraits for a number of uses.

Anna Gomez
anna_gomez@verizon.net

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Prints
Will Haubert
April 27, 2010

Will Haubert retired from his government job at 4 pm on September 2, 2008 and joined NVPS 3 hours later. His transition consisted of riding the Metro home and a quick dinner. He has not looked back and has never been happier!

In high school, Will was considered to have no artistic talent—he couldn’t even draw stick figures. So he went to law school. Years later, he began taking pictures to document his vacations and major moments in the life of his family. One day, as he stepped onto the Nydeck Bridge over the River Aare in Switzerland. He noticed the lines, shapes, textures, and colors of the red-tiled rooflines spreading into a residential sector of Bern. It was a crystalline moment—a realization that photography could be art. His heart leaped. The teachers were wrong; Will had just been using the wrong medium!

Will began hanging photos in his office. Colleagues stopped by just to look at his “gallery” and in 2008, he was picked as an “Artist in Residence.” Soon, Will began to resent the amount of time his job took from his photography. So he retired!

Will has been shooting in earnest for the past two years and credits his experience at NVPS with teaching him just about everything he knows about photography. His favorite subjects these days are his grandchildren and anything else that fits in his viewfinder. He traditionally shot landscapes (‘cause that’s where he most often found himself) and appreciates NVPS field trips as they provide a rich palette of new subjects to sample.

Last year, Will was NVPS’ Photographer of the Year in three categories—Versatile, Novice Monochrome, and Novice Color. Along the way, he won Print of the Year in both Color and Monochrome. In addition, he has had images juried into

• the Wilmington International Exhibition of Photography (5 images and a DPS Honor Ribbon),
• the Maryland Federation of Art 8th American Landscape Exhibition (image selected for Cover of Brochure),
• the Meadowlark Nature Photo Expo,
• 2009 Arlington County Fair (Overall Reserve Grand Champion, Champion Monochrome), and
• Workhouse Center Inaugural Expo (2 images juried in).

In 2009 Will also exhibited in “The Power of Yellow” in the Art & Soul Space of Scituate Massachusetts.

Digital Projection
Bob & Jorja Feldman
April 27, 2010

Georgette Grossman
ggrossman@cox.net

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NVPS Annual End of Year Banquet
June 11th, 2010

Come one, come all!  This year's NVPS End-of-Year banquet will be held on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at the Westpark Hotel in Tyson's Corner at the intersection of Rt. 7 and Westpark Drive. Cocktails at 6.   Buffet dinner at 7. See all the best of the best photos, see the best-of-the-year winning photographs, enjoy good food, and good friends and End of Year awards. Price is $40 per person in advance and $45 after May 25th.  Payment can be made on the NVPS web site using paypal or by providing a check or cash to the NVPS Treasurer, Fred Chitty.  Checks should be made out to NVPS.

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Fine Art Photography is a Craft
Fred Chitty

Just like all other art forms, fine art photography is a craft.  I recently visited two exhibits in DC that reminded me of this fact.  First was the national gallery exhibit, History of Photography, Before Digital Cameras.  It was a wonderful trip down memory lane.  While the exhibit started with images from the 1830’s and took the viewer to Cibachrome images of the early 1990’s, my personal experience only started 50 years ago.  I constructed a pinhole camera using mat board and a hole poked in aluminum foil as the lens.  This camera used a paper negative and I made “contact” prints for a positive monochrome print image, all developed in an open tray of liquid chemicals.  No rubber gloves were involved, as OSHA didn’t exist. The exhibit covered this process quite well and had several fine examples.  Interesting enough, the last time I used my home darkroom was to produce cibachrome prints, directly from slide film, in the mid-1990’s.   Yes, they are holding up quite well, framed on my walls. 

After my tour of the National Gallery, I wandered down the street to the Museum of Natural History to see the Nature’s Best photography exhibit.   This exhibit picked up where the National Gallery exhibit left off.  The images were exquisite, evoking emotion responses from the viewers.  Almost all were made with digital camera’s and processed with computer software.  I was particularly struck by the montage flower portraits in  Nature’s Best's new Creative Digital category.   It made me think how all artistic crafts have evolved over time.  It also made me think that each artist, photographic or otherwise, has choices in how they develop their own individual craftsmanship and how they create the final image.   In the case of these flower images, the photographic artist could have created the image by arranging the flowers prior to taking the photograph.  Or she could have made multiple exposures in camera, as she built the image.  Or she could have taken individual images on film and made multiple exposures in the printing process.  But what she actually did was to create a digital image of each individual flower and then stitch the individual images together using up to 60 layers in Photoshop.  Like many photographers, her inspiration came from a classic painter.  Mulling this all over in my mind, I realized it didn’t really matter how she did it.  The composition and quality of the resulting final image is all that mattered.   Nature’s Best decided her images used the picture space better than other images submitted.   

Over my life I have listened to other’s say “Photography is dead” with the advent of new tools and techniques in the photographic craft.   It seems there will always be early adopters and those naysayers, highly resistant to change.  I heard it in the 1950’s when color film replaced black & white as the film of choice by consumers.  I heard it again in the 1960’s when 35mm SLR cameras  replaced the large format sheet film cameras used by photojournalists.  I have heard it recently when Photoshop replaced the wet darkroom.   Looking at the photographic images in the Nature’s Best exhibit and at NVPS competitions, I know such a notion is pure nonsense.  With the advent of digital cameras and programs like Photoshop, fine art photography is more alive and vibrant than it has ever been in its 170 year history.  Artists by nature are creative souls, always seeking the new, perfecting their craft and improving the tools and techniques of their craft.  My day was well spent by enjoying the resulting images of the craftsmanship of many photographic artists.   I highly recommend both exhibits.    

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Glennie Digital Photo Competition
 
NVPS members submitted thirty-six images for consideration for the Glennie Digital Photo Competition, a nature  photo competition sponsored annually by the Merrimack Valley Camera Club of Andover, Massachusetts. Each club is permitted to enter up to ten images. A panel of judges selected the ten images to represent NVPS from among the thirty-six entered. The following individuals had one image each chosen: Bob Friedman, Willa Friedman, Mike Kledzik, Will Haubert, Fred Siskind, Judy McGuire, Dennis Govoni, Sam Schaen, Jan Ponder and Mike Dubois.
 
Merrimack Valley will hold the competition on March 27. Club standings and individual awards will be announced soon after.
 
The images will be available  for viewing in the NVPS Photo Gallery in the near future.

John Quigley
Exhibits Coordinator

Judy McGuire

Judy McGuire has an image published in Virginia Wildlife Magazine's Annual Photography Contest Showcase issue. Lady's Slipper Leaf won Honorable Mention in the Fantastic Flower Category.

Judy McGuire
jkmcguire@cox.net

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Exhibition Opportunities

Greenspiration: defining, defying & denying GREEN

The Workhouse Arts Center invites all professional and amateur artists 18 years and older residing in Virginia, Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania & W. Virginia to define, defy or deny GREEN in an all media (except video) juried exhibition that interprets the theme of green in the most creative ways.  This exhibition is an attempt to provide artists with a provocative theme that will encourage creative response outside the color wheel.
The juror is Trudi Van Dyke, an independent curator and fine arts consultant who juries and curates nationally.

vandykegreen@gmail.com

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National Wildlife Photo Contest

The National Wildlife Federation is now accepting entries for the 2010 National Wildlife Photo Contest. Cash prizes of more than $30,000 plus other gifts will be awarded to the winners in seven categories in three separate divisions. Submit up to 25 images in 7 categories: Birds, Mammals, Other Wildlife, Landscapes/Plants, Connecting People and Nature, Backyard Habitat and Global Warming. The submission deadline is July 6, 2010. Winning images will be published on the NWF website and a selection will appear in the December 2010 issue of their magazine. Go to the entry page for more details and the complete rules. http://www.nwf.org/photocontest/default.aspx

Submitted by Matthew Schmidt

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Adam Lister Gallery

This is an international open call for artwork to be exhibited in the upcoming summer group show in the Adam Lister Gallery.  This exhibition will run from June 4 through July 18, 2010.

This open call will be juried by the gallery board of directors and gallery staff.  All artists that are selected will be featured in a six week show in the gallery. The entry deadline is May 1, 2010.

The Adam Lister Gallery is located in the center of Fairfax City, and offers a high level of  visibility for artists to display their work.  We've been recognized as the premier contemporary art gallery in the Northern Virginia area.  Working closely with collectors and  curators, our goal is to provide an art exhibition space for both established and emerging artists.

For this open call we are looking for art done in any medium.  Drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, photography, installation, and anything else you work with is acceptable.  There are no restrictions regarding subject matter or size (though it must be able to fit through our door 70"x82").  Artists of any age and background are encouraged to submit their work.  We're looking for unique and interesting approaches to the idea of art making. For more information, visit: http://www.adamlistergallery.com/submissions.html

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Events

Ansel Adams Exhibition

The Dept of the Interior is having a display of previously unseen Ansel Adams photos at the HQ of Interior starting today. It is open to the public during regular business hours.

The U.S. Department of the Interior Museum exhibition Ansel Adams: The Mural Project 1941-1942 is open to the public by appointment only. Reservations for a guided tour should be made two weeks in advance by calling the Museum at (202) 208-4743. Adult visitors must present photo identification.  More information can be found at http://www.doi.gov.

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Huntley Meadows

Workshops and Tours

BBC Wildlife Magazine Master Classes

Jamie Konarski Davidson and Chris Barnes

Jamie Konarski Davidson
New Life Photos
252.327.4567
jamie@newlifephotos.com
www.newlifephotos.com

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Nikhil Bahl Photography

Nikhil Bahl
240-246-6654
nikhil@nikhilbahl.com
www.nikhilbahl.com

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Cory Hilz

Frank Van Riper

Contact: GVR@GVRphoto.com or www.glenechopark.org

http://talkingphotography.com/archive/2009/photowork.htm

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West Mill Photography Workshop in Southern France
George Munday

Kirsten Apple of
Falls Church, VA at
703-969-7633
info@thewestmill.com or
www.thewestmill.com

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Awake the Light Photo Tours
Mollie Isaacs & Mary Lindhjem

Mollie Isaacs
757-773-0194
awakethelight@cox.net
www.awakethelight.com

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Northern Virginia Alliance of Camera Clubs (NVACC)

The NVACC web page can be found at: www.nvacc.org. The combined calendar for the NVACC can be found at: http://www.nvacc.org/Calendar.html.

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Publicity Guidance. NVPS has the responsibility for the publicity for the Mid-Atlantic Nature Photography Expo (formerly Meadowlark). John Quigley is preparing a timeline for the tasks for this effort. If any member has experience in the area of publicity/marketing such an event and would be available to provide guidance and assistance, your help would be greatly appreciated. No meetings to attend just telephone or e-mail conversations with John and other members of the committee.

John Quigley
NVPS Exhibits Coordinator
jhquigley@msn.com

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