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December Speakers - Kimo Williams Postponed

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Normally in December, we do not have a meeting, but have instead our holiday party with a great dinner and a photo swap. This year, well, you know.... So instead of our holiday party, we will have TWO speakers in December, both the same week as our usual meeting date.

For Club Members only: Monday, December 7, at 7 pm: David duChemin, arranged by the West Shore Photography Club, and we are helping to sponsor this speaker. It will be recorded by the duChemin team and the recording available upon request for a limited time only to our deaf members, per agreement with duChemin's agent. Therefore, most of our members will need to see this presentation "live," so mark it on your calendar. A Zoom link to this presentation will be sent to you next weekend.

Illustrated by inspiring photographs from around the world, The Heart of the Photograph Virtual Lecture with David duChemin is a 90-minute conversation (including Q&A time) exploring ten powerful ideas about the creation of more engaging photographs. This webinar will discuss techniques and ways of thinking about the creation of images designed to engage human imagination and emotion, including questions of vision and intent, the use of space and time, the creation of depth, and the use of point of view. David will also discuss mood and mystery, storytelling, and what this all means for our choices of moments as well as more practical considerations, like the more creative use of exposure tools, composition, and more. This will be a compelling lecture with (and about) heart that your club will remember for a long time.

David duChemin is a best-selling author, award-winning photographer, and leading expert in the field of creativity. With over 35 years experience making photographs, his calling is to help photographers make photographs that are more than just sharp and well-exposed. David teaches how to make photographs that light a spark in people, that communicate clearly, that captivate imaginations and grab the attention and hearts of the people who will see them. As an international workshop leader and author of best-selling books like Within The Frame and The Soul of the Camera ( both published in over a dozen languages), he’s taught students this incredible craft on all seven continents.

If you want more, you can get a sense of his teaching on his blog at davidduchemin.com.

You can see his portfolio at portfolio.davidduchemin.com.

And you can listen to his sultry radio voice by listening to his podcast about the joys and challenges of everyday creativity at aBeautifulAnarchy.com.

Open for all members and guests/visitors: Wednesday, December 9, at 7 pm, Kimo Williams Postponed!

Marshall Dupuie and I first met J. Kimo Williams when we walked by his gallery in downtown Shepherdstown, WV. He had a selection of antique cameras in the window, and upon further inspection, we wandered into his shop and met this intriguing man. He is a musician, a composer, a photographer, a proud Vietnam veteran, and so much more. He's hard to describe in a few words, so here are three biographies to choose from: long, medium, and short! A Zoom link to this meeting will be sent to you the weekend before.

In his talk, Williams will discuss:

  1. Finding the Light
  2. Adding your personal narrative (cropping, effects, presentation, mounting etc.)
  3. The shot - What it is and what it will be
  4. Understanding the Home Run (a metaphoric approach to understanding your camera)

You can visit some of Williams' galleries here, including his current "Counties of the Potomac River" series.

Instead of an honorarium, Williams has requested that our club make a donation to his "The Names of Those..." project, to support an art installation that will include a video monitor to scroll the names and dates of death of every US military member who died as a result of their service in Vietnam.

November 11th meeting - David Wolanski

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Although domestic violence is a harsh reality, it is a reality that many face, and that fortunately, some survive. Dover photographer David Wolanski first encountered this reality when he learned that someone he thought he knew fairly well was regularly assaulted by her husband, and she honestly thought that this was how all relationships worked, because it was the life she and others she knew were living. David decided to use his portrait photography skills to help share the stories of survivors of domestic violence by encouraging them to share their stories.

David writes, "For the last several years, I’ve been using my experience doing portraits to do a photo and story project against Domestic Violence and think it’s the most important work I’ve ever done. This presentation is about the 1:4 Project on my website at domesticviolencearoundus.com."

In this presentation, you will see how a personal photography project can truly have an impact on both the photographer and on those who are photographed. Here is a video in which David explains how he was inspired to begin. The Zoom link for this meeting will be shared closer to the date. Club meeting date is Wednesday, November 11, at 7 pm.

September meeting Via Zoom

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September 9 Meeting, 7 pm, Jennifer King Via Zoom

The speaker for our September meeting is Jennifer King, who will share her presentation on “Photographing America’s National Parks.” The National Park Service has preserved and protected our country’s most beautiful and unique landscapes for over 100 years. The mission and dedication of so many people throughout history has provided all American’s with an opportunity to experience and enjoy nature from the east coast to west, and points in between. The diversity that each of our parks offer photographers and nature enthusiasts is unmatched in the world. It is in these special lands that we experience the best of America and nature.

"Photography is a journey, it's about the destination and its uniqueness. Experiencing America's landscape, is simply the world at its best.”

Jennifer King is an internationally acclaimed landscape and nature photographer with a passion for teaching and inspiring photographers around the world. She draws on her fine art and design background to bring a fresh perspective to nature photography. Her ability to teach composition and inspire creativity is unmatched. See more about Jennifer King at her website, www.jenniferkingphoto.com

Jennifer was named as 1 of 15 Amazing Women to Follow by 500px. She is also the Founder of PHOTOGRAPHY for the FIGHT AGAINST BREAST CANCER ( pfabc.org), an industry wide organization bringing together the biggest names in photography to raise money for breast cancer research.

Visitors are always welcome to attend our meetings. Please send email to info@frederickcameraclique.org to RSVP; you will be contacted with meeting information just before the September 9 meeting date.

August Meeting Via Zoom

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TITLE: Are Photographers Held to a Higher Standard Than Visual Artists?

ABSTRACT: When a photographer captures the image of an object as a picture, the resulting photograph presents the illusion of truthfulness. The photographer is often questioned as to how accurately the photograph represents the object.

Yet when an artist creates a visual art (painting, drawing, sculpture) resulting in a picture, the result is considered to represent the artist's expression of their skill or imagination. No question of its accuracy is raised.

There are many art and photography genres, but they are not treated equally. The photographer must adhere to ethics in nature photography, for example. If an artist captures a bird in flight, they are not questioned as to where the bird was located and how it was treated, was it in the wild or in a conservatory. The photographer might be asked if the photograph is the result of captive animals that are placed in natural-looking settings, or perhaps was baited to come to the setting. Their images can also be eliminated from contests if the animal actions are perceived to be staged in some way manipulated.

The photographer can also be an artist. They can proclaim that they are a performing the actions of a visual artist when they use photography as a medium in expressing their imagination.

Gundars will show multiple examples of photographs that contain questions of truthfulness vs art, and engage us in a discussion of how photographers are often put on the spot to defend their images, and how we as photographers may respond to questions that are raised.

Here is the Zoom link to the August meeting, described below.

https://zoom.us/j/93763270306?pwd=ZFhzRnBid21jUUlYdWhxVnEycUNFZz09

Meeting ID: 937 6327 0306 Passcode: 7NEZMw

April 8th Meeting- Cancelled

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Coriolana Simon has won acclaim for her still life photography, which re-interprets 17th century Dutch still life paintings. Trained as an architect, but also a writer and musician, Coriolana Simon feels the influence of these disciplines in her photography. While she enjoys the magic of macro photography, which can open windows for her into a different visual universe, she remains primarily focused on still lifes. She has long admired the still life paintings by Dutch artists of the 17th century. Not only do they give a detailed view of Dutch culture but many were painted in a style as realistic as photographs. While never copying a painting, Simon re-interprets the original themes with her camera and applies classic composition and lighting techniques to arrangements of her historic objects. To give depth to the undertaking, Simon has studied hundreds of paintings and read extensively on Dutch cultural, political, economic, social, religious, and military history.

View some of Coriolana's outstanding still life work at her website, Time Points Photography.

March 11th Meeting - Critique of Work

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Our annual critique night is Wednesday, March 11. All members are encouraged to submit three photos for critique by member Howard Clark, who will view the images prior to the meeting in order to prepare his comments. We always learn so much from this review of work!

Start thinking about what photos you want to have reviewed. Some people like to show work that reflects a new technique they have tried (studio lighting, black & white, or infrared, for example). Others submit photos they want to learn how to improve. Some will be showing work for the first time and want to know what an independent reviewer thinks of it. The choice is yours. If you are considering submitting some work to our juried summer show, this critique is a good opportunity to show some pieces you might enter for the show.

Howard will discuss each photo so that the entire group will learn from his comments and suggestions. For this critique, prepare three photos for review.

You will be emailing the images as attachments to Cam, and she will place them in a secure folder on her website so that Howard has time to look at them before the meeting. You can send the images however you want, and Cam will size them appropriately for the review. Jpegs are preferred, as Tiffs will likely be too large for email.

Please email your images to cam.miller@comcast.net. Put Critique in the subject line. The deadline is Friday, March 6, in order to give Cam enough time to get all the photos sized and loaded onto the website and to give Howard enough time to review them.

Please number your photos in order of preference with LastName#1, i.e. Smith#1.jpg, Smith#2.jpg, etc. Or, in the body of the email message, describe which photo is your first preference, your second, and your third. If we receive more images than Howard can possibly review in a reasonable amount of time at the meeting, the review may be limited to your first and second choices

January Meeting - Mel McNamara, digital book making

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Besides making prints or posting our images on social media, there is a whole world of digital book making out there to explore! Mel McNamara will be sharing a number of resources and "how to's" for making a quality digital book using templates from various websites as well as using the book module built into Lightroom.

Mel is an avid photographer of places, people, and events. She started her photographic journey in college with her first film SLR camera and built a darkroom in her parent’s garage. She is accomplished in Photoshop, Lightroom and InDesign. Mel loves to travel and create books of her adventures, she also enjoys designing cookbooks for people using their loved one’s original recipe cards.

Mel graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. She has a Masters degree in Library Science from Catholic University and a Masters degree in Educational Media from Boston University. Mel is a retired Library/Media Specialist and Educational Technology Resource Teacher having worked for the Howard County Public Schools in Maryland.

Mel teaches the following class for Capital Photography Center: Creating Books with Lightroom's Book Module.

December Meeting - Holiday Party

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In lieu of a December meeting, there will be a holiday party for members only on Wednesday, December 11. It is our club tradition to have a holiday social event in our usual meeting room at the Delaplaine, which will be decorated for a party! This annual pot-luck supper is always a lot of fun. We will have a slideshow of member images, dinner and dessert, and then a fun photo swap.

For the dinner, please sign up at the link below for what to bring for the dinner. We will provide cold shrimp and cocktail sauce, water, ice, and all plates/cups and utensils. Please bring main dish items, side dishes, and desserts. Use this link to indicate how many will be in your party as well as what you will bring. RSVP by Monday, December 9. Signup Genius for Holiday Party

The Photo Swap: For the photo swap, if you are bringing a print, it should be matted and suitable for framing. New! If you prefer to bring a "photo gift," such as a mug, a calendar, a tote bag, an ornament, or a set of notecards featuring one of your photos, that's acceptable, too! Wrap your photo gift with no identifying info on the wrapping, but please do include your name inside, preferably by signing the mat if a print, or a note inside a photo gift. Place your wrapped photo gift on the gift table at the party, and we'll go over the rules for this fun swap at the party. Participation is voluntary; you do not have to bring a photo gift to come to the party, but the more we have, and more "thieves" we have during the swap, the more fun it is!

Best Five Images: During the holiday party, we will show your best or favorite images of 2019 and show them off in the annual holiday party slideshow! Send your images to Gundars Osvalds, who will create the slideshow to be show at the party. If you want to size them, choose 2400 pixels on the long side, 72 dpi, and sRGB colorspace. If you would prefer just to send them to Gundars, make sure they are no larger than 3 mb each. Gundars will take care of any resizing needed. Rename your files with your name, please, so that Gundars can keep them together. Ex - CMiller-1.jpg, CMiller-2.jpg, etc. Deadline for sending images is Tuesday, December 10. gundars.osvalds@gmail.com

November Meeting - Harold Ross

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November 13th

hroldross.jpg

The November speaker will be Harold Ross, a master "sculptor of light." Check out his website and put November 13 on your calendar.

Join photographer Harold Ross for an information-packed presentation on Sculpting with Light, a technique that he has been perfecting for almost 30 years. Harold will show you how his vision and his method of light painting can transform the ordinary subject into something extraordinary. His lighting technique reveals remarkable detail, shape and dimension in his subjects. This lighting cannot normally be “seen," as it involves a building up of light over time and over multiple captures. The photographing of one image can take minutes or even hours to record.

Butterfly walk in the Audrey Carroll Audubon Sanctuary Aug. 24th 9 am

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Cam Miller will lead a butterfly walk in the Audrey Carroll Audubon Sanctuary on Saturday, August 24, from 9-11 am. Bring water. Wear long pants and shoes that might get a bit grassy and mucky. Your longest lens is advised, although many of the butterflies will be up close. Please RSVP to Cam: cam.miller@comcast.net. Directions will be sent out a few days before the walk to all who RSVP. You can also RSVP for this trip via the Meetup Group.

Sept. Meeting - Ink and Silver: Medicine, Photography, and the Printed Book, 1845-1890

September 11th, 7:00pm

Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD, AHIP History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine

Medical photography has long attracted the interest of historians and archivists, with the result that there are many significant collections of photographic material both in public and private hands. However, too often, individual images have been made to stand alone, far removed from their original context, and therefore mysterious to the viewer. Why were these pictures taken? Who saw them? Were they meant for private study or professional publication? How did they reflect the techniques and aesthetics of the rest of contemporary photography, in particular the status of photography as the recorder of un-manipulated “truth”? And how, in a purely technical sense, did one produce and publish medical photographs in the 19th century?

This presentation will be illustrated with materials from the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine Division, as well as from other institutions such as the Royal College of Physicians.

Stephen Greenberg received his doctorate in Early Modern History from Fordham University in 1983 with a dissertation on early printing and publishing. After teaching for several years, he returned to school and earned his library degree from Columbia University in 1991, specializing in Rare Books and Archival Management. Since 1992, he has worked in the History of Medicine Division at the US National Library of Medicine (one of the constituents of the National Institutes of Health), where he is currently Head of the Rare Books and Early Manuscripts Section.

Dr. Greenberg is also an adjunct professor at both the Catholic University of America and the College of Library and Information Studies at the University of Maryland (College Park) where he lectures on the History of the Book.

Summer Picnic Cancelled

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Mark your calendar on Sunday, August 18, for our summer picnic, to be held at Surreybrooke, a beautiful nursery and garden center in Middletown. It will be from 11 am - 2 pm at the pavilion. More info to follow, but this is a great time to bring family, enjoy the gardens, do some macro and flower photography, and share your favorite picnic foods.

August Field Trip -- Monocacy National Battlefield

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The new date is August 4th.

Geoff Grant has arranged for a guided battlefield tour from 5:15-7:30 pm on Sunday, July 21. We will be lead by Ranger Georgia Etter, and, tentatively, we will tour three sites, the Best, Thomas, and Worthington farms with time for a short discussion and photography of each site. The tour ends at 7:30, which will allow an hour for photography of the battlefield at sunset (8:30 on 7/21). Members will need to be in a position to exit the park at 8:30, which is when it closes.

Family members are welcome to come with you on this field trip.

Please contact Geoff directly if you are interested in going. It is a chance to get some "insider information" apart from what we read on the historical markers at the sites. Geoff can answer any questions you have and will be in contact again with more information. Geoff's email is geoffgrant2010@gmail.com.

May Field Trip

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May Field Trip

Cam Miller has offered to lead a field trip to Antietam on Monday, May 27, which is Memorial Day. The graves at the National Cemetery will be decorated with American flags. We will catch the early morning light there, and after photographing in the graveyard, do a photo walk in the town of Sharpsburg. We'll have a late breakfast at Bonnie's Red Byrd Restaurant afterwards.

Plan on meeting at 6:15 am at the Costco parking lot close to the gas pumps, where we can car pool. If you would prefer to meet at the cemetery, meet us at the parking lot across the road from the cemetery at 7:15 am.

There will be wet grass, so bring a change of shoes or wear boots, and perhaps something to kneel on for those low-angled shots. A wide-angle lens in addition to your regular lens might be helpful. Tripods are recommended. The gnats can be fierce in the morning, so a sweatshirt with a hood and drawstring or a bug net hat might be a lifesaver!

To RSVP for this trip, please email Geoff Grant on or before May 24 with your name, cell number, where you will be meeting the group, and if you are willing to drive. geoffgrant2010@gmail.com

June Meeting- When mathematics meets photography: An exploration of spherical panoramas Thomas Germer

Our June 12 meeting will feature Thomas Germer, a photographer and scientist from National Institute of Science and Technology. He will share his amazing geometric 3-D displays with us and give us insight on how he photographs and contructs his shapes.

Artist Statement: I have always been interested in photography and optics. As a career physicist, I specialize in studying how light interacts with materials and how one can learn about a material by the way it reflects or transmits light as a function of wavelength, direction, or polarization. As a photographic artist, I like to explore how lighting, color, and perspective affect how we perceive objects. I view the world with a unique sense of humor and, using my experience in physics and optics, try to put what I see in an interesting perspective. Viewing an object from a different vantage often transforms it into something different than what we normally think of it as. Mixing two dissimilar and contrasting subjects in one image is a means to express drama, humor, and/or irony, and I like to explore this aspect of photography. In my most recent work, I explore spherical panoramas, where the entire scene is captured from a single vantage point. Always working to extend the photographic medium, I began experimenting with constructing sculptures with the images, first by mapping the panorama onto a cube, moving to other polyhedra, then to more organic solids.

Description of talk: In this presentation, I will start by describing spherical panoramic photography: the methods used and the basic workflow. After that, I will explore some of my work, emphasizing that for any single panorama, one can obtain many very different ways of viewing the same scene, using that scene as a palette for structure and form.