Mike was exposed to art at a very young age by his father, an artist by trade as well as an amateur photographer. Mike also loves music and learned to play guitar in his mid teens. Surprisingly, he became interested in computers in college and chose this field for his career. Except for using a Pentax SLR to capture screen shots in the 80's his camera use was limited until more recently when digital cameras became popular. After retiring, he purchased his first DSLR, in 2006 and has enjoyed taking almost every kind of photo ever since. His main interests are in close-up, landscape, nature, people, still life and certainly travel photos. He is also fascinated with the flexibility and creativity made possible with today's post-processing software and loves to experiment with different effects including textures and painting on images. He feels that this part of the photographic process is equally as important as composing the shot and snapping the shutter in producing the final result. He has also become quite fond of the interesting blurring effects produced by the Lensbaby system. 

Mike joined NVPS in 2009 which has had a significant positive impact on his picture taking ability. "Joining NVPS has given me access to a wealth of creative ideas and resources as well as meeting some very interesting and talented people." Last year he won NVPS's "Versatile Photographer of the Year" award. For the last two years, he has also won Washington Gardener Magazine's photo contest that included cover photos on their spring edition magazines (see left image). Also, a number of his photos placed in the juried "Nature Visions Expo" for the last 2 years. Mike has also assisted Scott Musson this past year with managing the club's website. 

This digital presentation will include European travel photos taken over the last 4 years. Countries will include Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Highlights will include Lake Como (IT), Cinque Terre (IT), Venice (IT), the Amalfi Coast (IT), Paris (FR), The Alsace (FR) Wine Route, Strasbourg (FR), Bruges (BE), and the windmills and tulip blooms in the Netherlands. Color, B&W as well as textured and painted-on images will be displayed. A few examples are shown below. Please come and see some interesting views of European landscape, architecture, culture and people at the February 28, Member's Gallery presentation.

                     

As a kid in a small town in East Texas, Dan Ward experimented with holding a magnifying glass in front of the family brownie for macro shots and holding an instamatic up to the eyepiece of a telescope for telephotos. He learned the hard way that baggies were not the same as waterproof housings, and got his first 35mm camera by swapping an old guitar for it at a flea market. 

 Dan shot medium format and 35mm until he began the migration to digital in 2001. His first love is street photography, although he also enjoys nature photography. He is a confirmed Nikonoholic and uses a D7000 as his primary camera, although he occasionally uses a Holga "to keep from becoming too dependent on technology." 

 Dan photography shows include the Ellipse Gallery's Best Photos of the Last 75 Years, Claude Moore Nature Photo Expos, Nature's Vision 2010 & 2011, several Meadowlark Nature Photo Expos (Kodak Sponsor's Choice award 2006), On Your Own Time art shows in Dallas (People's Choice Awards in 2004 and 2006) and various community art shows in Virginia, Texas, Connecticut and Arizona. His astrophotos have been published in Sky & Telescope and Astronomy magazines as well as in David Levy's bestseller, The Sky. 

 For the past five years, Dan has been advocating the emerging art form of "phoetry" - a process of combining photos with poetry in a way that integrates the two mediums so that the end result is greater than the sum of the parts. The key should be more than just an annotated photo or illustrated poem. In collaboration with the poet, Dr. Catherine Sweeney Burton, he created two phoetry collections published by Blurb books: Emerge and Plane of Life. The Atrium Gallery in McLean featured a show of Plane of Life in the fall of 2010. Samples of his

 work are available on line at: http://danlward.imagekind.com/store/default.aspx 

Dan's presentation tonight is a collection of phoety prints, including images with traditional poetry and photohaiku prints. Photohaiku is a type of phoetry that uses the traditional haiku of poems with a 5 - 7 - 5 syllable pattern. Some of tonight's images use Dan's photos with poetry created by Dr. Burton, while others use his poetry.