Melanie Marts

Melanie, for 20 years, has been a Gemologist and independent appraiser, who joined NVPS in 2007. She one of many who used disposable film cameras to take family photos in the 1980’s, and they weren’t very good pictures. She started out with a Polaroid camera in the early 1990’s to take pictures of the jewelry she appraised, because that was the easiest. Her first digital camera was an Olympus point-and-shoot, which had all of 1.2 megapixels, and those pictures weren’t great either. Her next camera was a 7.1 megapixel Olympus, and that was when she realized she could take pictures of other stuff in addition to jewelry and family.

Using Georgia O’Keefe as her inspiration, she started out taking pictures of flowers in her backyard. In 2006, she acquired her first SLR camera, a Nikon D80, and never looked back. She currently is using a Nikon D300, with a 24 – 120 mm f4 lens as her main lens.

In 2011 she graduated from the Washington School of Photography’s professional photography program. Melanie takes pictures of just about anything if it looks interesting to her, using various techniques and processing to achieve her vision. She still loves to take pictures of flowers, and Georgia O’Keefe is still her inspiration.

Judy McGuire

Judy became interested in photography and travel when she was 10 and took her first road trip to the western states with her family and her Kodak Brownie camera. She took snapshots documenting family, travels and pets for many years before getting a Nikon SLR for slide photography. In 2007, she switched to digital and now shoots with a Nikon D7000.

Judy is most interested in travel and nature photography and loves to photograph anywhere, searching out back roads as well as obvious sites. She enjoys giving slide shows for various groups and makes calendars and note cards with her photographs. Her work has been juried into Nature Visions and the Joseph Miller Abstract Exhibit, and published in Virginia Wildlife Magazine.

In 2001, Judy saw former member Luella Murri on one of the first Photographers of Northern Virginia programs. She phoned Luella after the show for NVPS information and became a member shortly afterwards. Since then, Judy has enjoyed learning about all aspects of photography from the club’s activities.

Judy’s show will feature photos of varied subjects taken within the last two years. A number of locations will be spotlighted, many of them in our general area.