Lorelei Studios
Happy new year to everyone. Since this is a new blog, I suspect that no one is watching, but I’ll post anyway. I’m really happy to be starting a new year with a new website, blog included.
The car? This 1955 Ferrari 500 Mondial belongs to Rear Admiral (Ret.) Robert Phillips. I had the pleasure of taking some pictures of it at the Rockville Antique and Classic Car Show in 2011. Here it is in front of the Glenview Mansion where the show is held.
Alain Briot runs Beautiful-Landscape, a site that promotes photography as fine art. Alain writes on many topics, including running a photography business and the fallacy that many starting photographers deal with, believing that if they work for less, they will sell more.
I stumbled upon Alain’s writing when I was reading a posting on Luminous-Landscape, a website where there are numerous excellent articles on photography, product reviews, tutorials, essays, etc. I still subscribe to Alain’s blog, but frankly I don’t spend a tremendous amount of time reading it any longer.
Alain and his wife Natalie run workshops through Beautiful-Landscape, mostly in desert southwest.
I met Mary and Mollie through Joe Miller and NVPS (my camera club) shortly after Mary and Mollie began working together and created Awake the Light, where they both teach and mentor photographers. I have been to several of their presentations and they are always informative and fun. Their take on photography, that it should be fun, comes out in their presentations and in their work.
What can I say about Joe that hasn’t already been said? Joe is my photographic mentor and good friend, founding member of the Northern Virginia Alliance of Camera Clubs, frequent speaker at local camera clubs, preacher of the 4C’s (Composition, Craftsmanship, Creativity and Communication) and Visual Communication, and promoter of the abstract photograph.
Joe has contributed more to the development of photography in the Northern Virginia region than any other individual. In 1997 NVACC published its first Directory of Speakers and Judges, and currently maintains that directory for use by member clubs and the general public. Joe also began providing a seminar for those who are interested in becoming a camera club judge, to increase the pool of people who could be chosen for each competition. In the early 2000s, Joe began publishing photography booklets through NVACC for a small fee. All of those booklets are available for download on the NVACC website now.
Two years ago Joe started an Annual Abstract Photography Exhibition and has worked tirelessly to make it successful, year after year. He just began accepting entries for the exhibit this past weekend.
If you ever get an opportunity to attend one of Joe’s classes, seminars or presentations, I strongly suggest that you take advantage of it.
I cannot say enough good things about Freeman Patterson. He is the most inspiring photographer that I have ever had the opportunity to meet. I was turned on to Freeman Patterson by my camera club, the Northern Virginia Photographic Society, and eventually had the time and money to attend a workshop. Freeman holds workshops with his partner Andre Gallant, another fine Canadian photographer.
I first bought “Photographing the World Around You: A Visual Design 
Workshop” to assist in attending my club’s self-improvement workshops back in 2006. I also bought “Photography of Natural Things” and “Photography and the Art of Seeing: A Visual Perception Workshop for Film and Digital Photography” to get some more of Freeman’s writing. Later, at the workshop, I bought “The Garden” and “Photoimpressionism and the Subjective Image: An Imagination Workshop for Photographers.” All are well read, and I still get something out of reading each one of them again.
Joe McNally has been an idol of mine since I started learning how to light photographs. His books, like “The Moment it Clicks,” “The Hotshoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes,” and his blog were early resources that I used to learn lighting. Later I had the opportunity to see Joe and David Hobby on the Flash Bus Tour, when I purchased Joe’s The Language of Light DVD set.
While I tend more toward the manual “Strobist” approach, I have been trying to get enough Canon branded flashes to do some of the high-speed sync that Joe has demonstrated.
David Hobby is a local(ish) photographer in my area whom I find to be extremely talented. Having read his Strobist site, subscribed to his blog and watched his “Lighting in Layers” DVD series, I learned a great deal about working with small hotshoe flashes.
I very much enjoyed the Flash Bus Tour that he did along with Joe McNally.
The 7th Annual Washington Gardener Magazine Photo Contest is now open for entry. Please see attached PDF for the new entry dates, rules, and information. I have also attached a Word .doc entry form. Spread the word to your fellow photographers, club members, local gardeners, etc.
Good luck and enjoy the rest of 2012!
Sincerely,
Kathy Jentz
Washington Gardener Magazine
www.washingtongardener.com
Starting yesterday, 29 December 2012, the 3rd Annual Joseph Miller Abstract Photography Exhibit began accepting entries. I have been a part of the exhibit since its inception as the webmaster for the Northern Virginia Alliance of Camera Clubs.
Previous exhibits’ images are available online if you are looking for an idea what types of images are juried into the exhibit.
It has been a LONG time, but I finally decided to re-work the website so that it better reflects what I am doing these days. Gone are the static pages and the junk that I had written up. Now I have a WordPress site that is much easier to maintain and adds a great deal of flexibility.
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