Northern Virginia Photographic Society
Promoting the enjoyment, mastery, & furtherance of photography through cooperation, effort, & good fellowship!
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Member's Gallery and Forum
February 22nd, 2011 - Members Gallery : Prints by Gerry Abbott & Digital by Paul Simmons
Members Gallery on February 22th, 2011 will include Prints by Gerry Abbot and Digital Projection by Paul Simmons. Join us for their presentations immediately followed by February's Forum presentation. The following are the biographies of the members presenting on February 22th: Gerry Abbot Gerry has been a member of NVPS since 2004 and has held positions of Field Trip Coordinator (2008-2009) and Competition VP (2009-2010). Gerry retired three years ago after a 32 year career in the International Oil and Gas Industry. He has become an active member in North American Nature Photographer's Society, Audubon Society, Audubon Naturalist Society and The Nature Conservancy. He has received photographic awards from the Meadowlark Photo Expo, National Wildlife Federation and others. Currently, his photographic subjects are predominantly birds, yet he enjoys all types of nature photography. At the Members Gallery, Gerry will show recent landscape prints that feature rocks in autumn foliage. The images were captured at Dolly Sods WV and Olmstead Island (C&O National Park) using a Canon 5DII camera with tilt/shift lens. Additionally, he will show prints of bird images from the 2010 NVPS field trip to Bosque del Apache NM that were captured with a Canon 7D camera and supertelephoto lens. The images were printed on Epson Velvet and Hot Press Bright fine art papers. Paul Simmons Paul's interest in photography began in college as an Engineering student. One of his student jobs involved processing film and making black and white prints for the Engineering Department. With his new skills and a fully equipped professional darkroom at his disposal, it occurred to Paul that he should have a camera. Epiphanies like this come to people who spend their lives in the dark. So, Paul purchased a Nikkormat camera, a case of Plus-X film and began photographing the world around him--enough to visualize his surroundings in B&W. However, over the years, this ability started to erode as his interests turned to color photography (flower and, lately, bird). One day, Paul awoke and found himself married with a growing family which left him precious little time, money, and energy for photography. His camera languished on the shelf for decades being dusted off for vacations, birthdays and Christmas only. Paul says he has no complaints..."If I had to do it again, I would not change a thing." Several years ago it dawned on him that his job, as an Engineer, was actually interfering with his picture taking activities so he retired. As Paul says, "Can you imagine that?" Today his favorite photographic subjects are his six grandchildren followed closely by flowers and birds - beautiful, colorful, wonderful subjects. Paul gives many thanks to NVPS members for eleven years of friendship and for the only photographic training he received. "I must admit, I do occasionally read a book about photography so the blame does not rest solely upon NVPS," says Paul. Early on in his photographic endeavors, Paul used Nikon film cameras and shot almost anything that was, "foolish enough to get in front of my lens." After a few years photographing like this, he purchased a 4x5 view camera and shot B&W landscapes exclusively. For guidance, he studied Ansel Adams' six books on photography. Today, Paul uses Canon digital cameras and an 800mm lens which he used to collect the images chosen for his presentation. His show is titled "Song Birds" and is a collection of images he gathered over the last two years. |
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