Prints (Virtually): Exploring Delaware with Deb and Art Rose
Art and Deb have enjoyed having two “home” states; one in Alexandria Virginia, and the other in Bethany Beach Delaware. The two locations are polar opposites, yet complement each other beautifully.
Alexandria offers the bustle of historic Old Town, Northern Virginia, and DC museums and landmarks. They enjoy photographing local places such as Huntley Meadows, Dyke Marsh, Mason Neck, Conowingo Dam, Battlefields, and Shenandoah.
Bethany Beach offers the quiet of the ocean, natural vistas, and a slower paced lifestyle. They enjoy photographing sunrise on the beach (well, Deb more so than Art at 5 AM), native birds, and sunsets on the Bay at the Ocean View VFW.
With their international travel on hold during the pandemic, and closure of museums and other sites in Virginia, they spent more time in Delaware exploring the “First State”, and made some delightful photography discoveries. They explored many sites including the capitol buildings in Dover, National Wildlife Refuges of Prime Hook and Bombay Hook, Assawoman Wildlife Areas, Great Cypress Swamp, Delaware Botanical Gardens, James Farm Ecological Preserve, Abbott’s, Warren and Double Mills, Slaughter Beach, and Lavender Fields.
Art and Deb’s interest in photography began over 20 years ago during a family trip to Australia. Their passion for both travel and photography continued to grow. Once retired from their careers, Art as a chemical engineer and Deb as a pediatric physical therapist, they have been living their dream to travel and capture their experiences through photography. Past travels through North, Central and South America included the Panama Canal, Galapagos, Ecuador, Peru and Machu Picchu. Travels through Europe and Asia included Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Italy, Greece and Malta. They enjoy all types of photography encountered on their travels: landscape, street, wildlife, architectural, night sky and every flavor in-between.
Members of NVPS since 2018, Art and Deb enjoy learning and developing creative skills to enhance their photography. Deb blends watercolor painting and brush effects with her photography to create photo artistic pieces, and Art enjoys applying new techniques to landscape, wildlife and still-life photos.
“We see photography as a way to connect with others, capture the experiences of new places, and discover different perspectives of familiar places”.
Digital: Patterns and Graphics with Wayne Guenther
When Wayne joined Gallery West (Alexandria VA) artist’s cooperative in 1995, he was an artist without an identity, a style. Wayne shot whatever he liked, and never examined why he liked the subject or settled on a particular composition. That gradually changed as he created new work monthly and received a lot of feedback about the “graphic nature” of his subjects and compositions. By 2001 Wayne had a second solo show that was nearly all graphic interpretations of furniture, and his statement started with “I like angles, lines and curves, so furniture is a natural subject”. Wayne’s third solo show at the gallery in 2003 was based entirely on interpretations of stairs, which have lines and curves of course. Jumping 18 years to today, Wayne has become a “generalist” in that extensive travel has given him so many subjects to photograph, but his underlying compositional instinct is still graphic based. This digital presentation will show examples of this result.
Wayne Guenther began his photography avocation in the late 1960s but became increasingly involved with Art Photography in the mid-1990s. Membership in Gallery West and the Art League (both in Alexandria, VA) nudged him to regularly create new work and develop a style. In 2009 he was a charter member and President of the Workhouse Photography Group (Lorton, VA) and remained active there until 2012 when he fully retired. Wayne joined NVPS in 2015. He has been accepted in many regional juried art competitions/shows over the past 25 years, and placed in several NVPS monthly competitions.
Wayne shot with Nikon equipment for many years until the aggregate weight on his back and shoulders became problematic. He switched to the micro-four-thirds system in 2014 and uses Olympus E-M1 bodies and a combination of Olympus and Lumix/Panasonic lenses.
