Members Gallery on October 26th, 2010 will include Prints by Susan Breen and Digital Projection by Marilyn Gaizband.  Join us for their presentations immediately followed by October's Forum presentation. 

The following are the biographies of the members presenting on October 26th:

Susan is an independent artist from Ashburn and a resident of Northern Virginia since 1988. She has been involved in photography since 2000 and a member of NVPS since 2004. During this time, she has won numerous awards for her fine art photographs and was named "Photographer of the Year" by NVPS for 2009-2010.

Her photographs are regularly displayed at the Hermitage Gallery in McLean and have been showcased at the Italian Store in Bethesda, the Color Wheel in McLean, Damon Galleries, Art Masters Gallery in Vienna and the gift shop of a governmental agency. Many of her photographs have sold to private, corporate and governmental clients.

Susan enjoys creating digital paintings from her photographs. Since adopting her dog, Heidi, in April 2010, she added pet photography to her portfolio and creating digital paintings from the photographs taken of our "furry friends."

To create her images, Susan uses a Nikon D90 and favors using her 18-200mm lens. She prefers low light and long exposure photography and using very light photo equipment.

Susan has recently retired from federal government service. She has three married daughters and five grandchildren. Her future plans are to, hopefully, expand her pet photo paintings into a business.

Marilyn's interest in photography began at age 30 when her sister gave Marilyn her first 35mm camera. She then studied at the Corcoran School of Art where she specialized in black and white photography. Here she developed a method for using infra red film to produce images which looked like impressionistic pointillism. Over the next ten years, Marilyn's work appeared in several fine art photography shows throughout the Washington area.

As lovers of the outdoors and nature, Marilyn and her husband, Sam, got their first taste of birding on a trip to Maine about 12 years ago. From the start, they were hooked. Photography combined with technology was a natural fit for them and their interest mushroomed. Over the last decade, they have traveled throughout the U.S. and abroad. The two have been to Churchill, Canada to photograph polar bears; Kenya, Africa on a photographic safari; the Falkland Islands to photograph penguins and other birds; Costa Rica to photograph exotic birds; and to Argentina and Brazil. In a hunt for new nature subjects, they have visited numerous National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges in the U.S. As well, Marilyn has been to Alaska and New Mexico several times.

Marilyn has recently used her expertise in Photoshop to explore new graphic and design ideas for her images. A few years ago, while driving home, she had a vision of many, many eyes layered on one another looking at her. When she got home, she created the first Kaleidimal.

The couple became members of the Northern Virginia Photographic Society in 2003. Marilyn was Co-Vice President for Competitions during the 2004-2005 season and Field Trip Coordinator during the 2009-2010 season.

Marilyn's digital slide show has three sections. The first consists of "straight" bird portraits. The second section is of "artsy" photographs using slow shutter speeds to create interesting blurred images. The final section shows a number of Kaleidimals she created using Photoshop.

Marilyn mostly shoots with a Nikon 300 using a 200-400mm lens with a 1.7 x teleconverter.