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Oh, by the way – First go check out Dave’s photos by clicking here or clicking on the “Photo Club Page ” in the left hand column.

We take photos for one of three reasons:

1. Document – “Botanical, like so many bird photos”
2. Share – “Oh my, see what I saw happen today, like Funniest Home Video”
3. Art – “Hang on the wall, could be one of the first two or could be a up-close macro photo, or a pure abstract creation from a photo using PhotoShop, as I often do”

In each of the three cases the composition elements must all be of good quality to keep the viewer enjoying the image for a long time.

So, it is a good idea to study your photos and ask yourself how you could improve the composition elements. – It will help you become a better photographer next time, no matter if you are documenting, sharing, or shooting art.

Here is one photo I studied and ask the question of composition quality to myself:

Before reading on, Dave Cesari posted again on the TGO Photo Club Page – Click here

Our Club Leadership Team consists of Linda Somers, Susan Hubbard, Ed Swan, Donald Wyllie, Linda Lublin, Jim Dick, Jim Spain, Doug Jensen, and Nancy Presant.

The goal of these folks is to help us learn how to make better photos, help us share the photos that we take, help us have fun doing it, and since many functions in the community need photographs taken, we offer that service.

The Education committee, arranged for an education session last night. In my judgement, It was SUPER OUTSTANDING: Here is their announcement:

“This Friday, January 24, at 7:00 PM in the Nature Center, Photo Club is happy to present professional photographer Shiv Verma speaking on Composition in photography.  From his business base in Massachusetts, Shiv Verma Photography

Shiv conducts photo tours and workshops around the world.   He is a past presenter at Titusville’s Space Coast Birding and Wildlife festival and will be at the Festival’s Exhibit Center (Free Admission) this week serving as a Panasonic/Lumix Ambassador.

Nature and wildlife are two of his special interests. He thinks of photography as art and says, “Photography gives me the ability to express and to communicate ideas that cannot be expressed in words.”

Susan Hubbard,  TGO Photo Club Secretary”
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Last November while resting from surgery, I developed a study process on the subject of “Composition.”   I generally study on average 60 minutes each day.  I use various sources including internet research and reading 5 digital books that I have purchased.  In addition I play around with PhotoShop to try a composition, change it, and compare it to the knowledge I find in my sources.  I stand back to see if I like the change and to see if I think a viewer will stay “looking” at my image for a long time. That is really the goal of composition. The viewer may like it, be relaxed by it, be angered by it, be frustrated by it, be made to recall an event in their life by it, or what ever.  But, in the end, if the viewer looks at the image a long time, that image is a winner.

Hopefully I will learn a lot through my studying.  If not, I sure find my study process a lot of fun:

Here are a couple of “in-process” PhotoShop studies of mine:

 

As I said in the last post:  This year the Club is active – it is alive – it is fun.  I am featuring  Photo Club’s members who have done many many projects to make this Club the success that it is.

Our Club Leadership Team consists of Linda Somers, Susan Hubbard, Ed Swan, Donald Wyllie, Linda Lublin, Jim Dick, Jim Spain, Doug Jensen, and Nancy Presant.

The goal of these folks is to help us learn how to make better photos, help us share the photos that we take, help us have fun doing it, and since many functions in the community need photographs taken, we offer that service.

 For years, Nancy Presant has put in more effort then you may realize, organizing and promoting fun photo shoots trips.  At each Club meeting and via e-mails in-between, Nancy tells us of option in Central Florida for photo shoots.

She researches cost, days available, tells us what type pf photo opportunities are there and negotiates  schedules. Sometimes she arranges for special group tours for our club.  She even researches restaurants where our members can share a meal before or after the shoot.  AND, her positive happy attitude sure makes that part of our Photo Club meeting fun – if our meeting drones on a little – Nancy  stands up to talk about trip options the whole demeanor of the meeting changes to an alive fun meting.

Next time you see Nancy, tip your hat, shake her hand, and say loud and clear – THANK YOU for helping to make the Photo Club fun.  Thanks for all that very hard work.

Members sent me photos from Nancy’s “Lantern Photo Trip” – I will post four below and the rest on the Photo Club Page.

FUN PHOTOS:

Click here to see a full set of Lantern Photos

 

 

 

This year the Club is active – it is alive – it is fun.    Last week we had 33 folks at our Friday meeting when Kris Lee-Scott gave us insights to the camera we most often have with us – the Cell Phone Camera.

In the next weeks I will feature Photo Club’s members who spent hours contributing to the Club and who have done many many projects to make this Club the success that it is this year.

Our Club Leadership Team consists of Linda Somers, Susan Hubbard, Ed Swan, Donald Wyllie, Linda Lublin, Jim Dick, Jim Spain, Doug Jensen, and Nancy Presant. Thanks to them and all the other members that offered their help at every step of the way. Thanks!

In this issue of the blog I want to talk about sharing.  We all love to share our photos and seeing other member’s photos.  I ask members what they like most about our meetings – SHARING IS THE CONSISTENT ANSWER!

Today, on this blog, I am featuring two of our “Photo Sharing” members.  More Club members that make the club a success will be featured on future blog updates.

SHARING:

1.  Dave Cesari, as he did today, shares by posting almost every week on TGO Photo Club Page (Click here or in lefthand to see Dave’s postings).

2.  Jim Dick, is dedicated to sharing:

First, Jim Dick has hung almost 40 of his own photos in the TGO library. He alone has taken on this project and has maintained and updated the photos on the library walls for many years. If you have not seen them, please make a special trip to our library to see what Jim has done there.

Second,  One of Photo Clubs projects is to give each member these platforms on which to share their photos – the Manor Lobby, the Manor porch, and the CSA office.  The committee of JimDick, Jim Spain, and Ed Swan hang dozens of photos on these walls.  Well,  they do not do it alone – the whole club chips in to help  but Jim Dick and the committee organize the whole thing. They will be organizing the hanging of new photos on the Manor porch in February.  Be sure to give Jim Dick at least one of your photos to hang there and offer to help and be a part of the project.

Third, Jim Dick posts many times a week on the TGO Nature Center Facebook Group page.  Become a member of the group to share your nature photos and to see all the photos that group members share there.

Here are several of Jim Dick’s photos that I borrowed from the Nature Center’s Facebook Group’s page. I really enjoy the variety of nature shots and want to say – from the whole Photo Club – Thanks to Jim Dick:

 

 

Hey, Look at Dave Cesari – He posted his success in Florida – All taken in the few days he has been in Florida this season.  Click TGO Photo Club in left column.

Then Read On Here:

Photography is not going out, following the rules, and taking a perfect photograph.

A photograph is an image of life as we thought we saw it. Since we are all different and our subjects are always changing, the concept of following a set of simple rules does not apply to photography.

Therefore, there are no rules to break. Well that is not true. There are some rules to break ’cause we humans are born with some eye-brain perceptions we all find pleasing –  regardless of which subjects we have a passion to photograph.

I am reading books, watching educational videos, and hope to attend classes that focus on “creative thinking” in photography.  I want to learn the eye-brain perceptions that we all find good, comfortable, and pleasing.   In art, that is called composition – regardless of the subject, media used, or emotion the photographer/artist wishes to convey.

I play around, every day, on my computer – play around changing composition to see the impact it has on my own eye-brain perception and try to line it up with what I read in the books:

 

1. Click on The TGO Photo Club The Cesari’s  are back in TGO – they been out phototgraphing Florida and they are sharing those photos with us. Click on The TGO Photo Club in the left column.

2.    Next – Click on “Digital Photo Art”  I have a book cover there – Do you think I could be a mystery writer?  Hey, James K. – Would you write this book – That is a personal note to my son – from a conversation we had while I was recording happenings on my iPhone.

3.      Then read on right here!   Think about photographing your own Holliday season.  Not just the tree and family/friend’s gatherings, but the things that happen every day.

Why photograph everyday things?

Because:   it is fun to relive the fun things that happened to you.  It is, also, fun to share them in the future.   You can enjoy and/or share them  one week from now, six months from now, or maybe years from now.   Maybe after you are gone, your family will enjoy them as part of your legacy showing how you enjoyed each day.

The following photos show recent  happenings that I enjoyed:

 

A friend of mine leads a writers club. I attend each meeting, but never wrote a fiction story – I attend his meetings to be more of an observing learner than a participant.  But, he and I have been talking about setting up a sub-group of folks from the writers club and

the photo club to write stories around photos we take.   Last week he assigned this challenge – write a story around this photo:

I took it a step further and said let me try to illustrate each paragraph that I will write.  So, rather then take time to photograph the needed illustrations, I went to the internet and found some photos.   I was testing an idea – How many photos, where to place them – with or without captions – Wow, I have much to learn. But, for this test, I was sure borrowed photos would work OK, since it was only a test.  Read on and tell me what you think.

FIRST: Click on the TGO Photo Club page in the left column.  Dave Cesari posted some  photos of winter in the North country that you will not want to miss – not only for their beauty but if you study them, as we talked in our last meeting, what a learning experience you will have just by studying these photos – they are great.

“IT IS A GOOD LIFE” by Jim Brubaker: Here is my first fiction story:

 Woody was a farm boy in the mountains of Pennsylvania. From day 1 of his life he was surrounded by love. His parents were Brethren church members, his aunts and uncles were Brethren, his 6 neighbors were Brethren church members, and they were all farmers.

Did you know that part of a special church service four times per year was a foot washing and a love feast – a feast of fellowship and love. 

The farm was large enough for Woody to have a portion of the farm for he and his new bride. But, OOPS!

Where did woody go to school – on the bus – the first generation that did not attend the two room school in the middle of the 7 Brethren farms of woody’s birth place. No, the county decided that all local schools would be closed and all would be bussed to a central school in Center City – a headquarters for the coal  mine that literally owned the company store, all houses, the streets, and even th

e swimming pool in Center City.

  They did not own the 2 Catholic churches, so they said (Roman and Russian).  Of course the Brethren folks did not wish to acknowledge such a life – there was never a bad word spoke of it – just sort of a “They do not really exist as real people – they are a foreign sort of human”  

Let’s leave this back ground stuff and jump ahead to when Woody married Mary

– both age 18 -Yipes Mary was Mary Sloviechi, a Catholic, from Center City.

Would the “simple life”  traditional Brethren share the farm with Woody and embrace this Union?

 

 

 

 

 

In short, they did not get their share of the farm.  So, to quickly move on – Mary and Woody hitch-hiked to California.

What happened there? You guessed it, they turned to drugs, parties, small burglaries to support their life style.

Mary was not satisfied with her life of small drugs, sleeping in the park and laying on the beach. She needed more money – You guessed  it, her new boy friend

and her schemed to do the First National Bank – did not go as planned – that was obvious when the boy friend jumped in the getaway car and left Mary standing there to shoot it out with the police – not a good shot proved to be the end of Mary for this story.

Jump ahead two years.  Woody, to Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island.  Just out of rehab, taken in by Mary’s mother, Mrs Sloviechi, who by this time owned the Mining Company and had a home on the cliffs of Rodman’s Hollow on the south side of the Island.

They became family, Woody clean of drugs – Oh, he did keep one dose of drugs in plain view on the mantel, just to prove to Mother Sloviechi that he was clean.  Mother completely relying on him to feed, dress and care for her for 2 years. Woody expected to spend the rest of his life on this very expensive estate on the cliffs of Rodmans’s Hollow – THE GOOD LIFE

Monday morning after the reading of the will. Woody got nothing, the Nature Conservancy of the Island got the estate with instructions that Woody should leave the estate within two days – this legal requirement was done to show how much Mother Sloviechi hated Woody for taking her daughter to California and destroying her.

Monday Noon – The mantel is empty.  The crashing of the Atlantic waves are hitting the rocks below the top of the cliffs on Rodman’s Hollow.  Woody’s mind is back in the Brethren Pennsylvania farm community, dreaming he is running along the farm road, arms outstretched as if he is a California glider plane about to launch from the end of the road at the cliff’s edge.  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT in the story of “IT IS A GOOD LIFE” by Jim Brubaker

 

 

FIRST:    Click on the TGO Photo Club page in the left column – I want you to see what two of our club members do with their photo knowledge and fine equipment – WOW – I can not say enough about their wonderful images.

SECOND:   As you swing thru life, your photo is good, if it is the photo you want.  I hope our Photo Club helps you learn to know what you want and helps you practice to get it more often.  Well, it is not only the Photo Club that helps you.  The helper is you. Oh my, read on to see what I mean by that confusing statement.  

Generally, you only have seconds to know what you want before snapping the shutter. Therefore everything you do in those seconds must be automatic.  You do not have time to stop, think, and analyze.

The club will focus on helping you to automatically declare the subject of the photograph, capture the light that gives the feeling you want, and compose the image that controls the eyes of the viewer.

It does not matter weather you are snapping a cell phone photo or setting up an expensive camera on a tripod with a bag of filters and lenses, the quality of your photo depends on subject, light, and composition. 

AUTOMATIC – Snapping a photo must be like answering the phone – It must be automatic.  Automatically pick the subject, compose the photo, and use light & color for effect.

When you bring photos to the meeting to share, please come prepared to tell the group how you picked the subject, composed the image, and/or selected the light.  The subsequent shared discussion is bound to be enlightening to us all.  

Please view this part of our meetings as very important.  The club will have some  lectures, but we adults, also, learn by listening to each other. Then, we can go home, try it, and return to the next meeting and share what we tried.  That is how you can help make that part of our meetings a very successful fun learning events.

See what I meant, it is not only the Photo Club that helps you. The helper is you.

I am a cell phone photographer – But you know, I must know the principles of good photography better than a photographer with expensive lens and a tripod – why? ’cause I do not have time to think – using the elements of a good photograph must be automatic.

Here are some of my cell phone photos that explain why I like the cell phone:

 

In September, I killed time while waiting for a hurricane to hit.  Of course, if I was 18 years old instead of 83 years old I would be killing time on my iPhone, playing a digital game. 

Guess what, this old dude can use digits to kill time too – we all can. On the internet I found this story.  Over in Paris and Singapore they are Doodling and using the digits of Facebook to share the doodles.  Here is one story about Singapore doodlers:

“When commuting on trains or buses in Singapore.  Erwin Lian whips out his trusty fountain pen and sketchbook and starts doodling away.

While other commuters take naps or busy themselves with their phones, the 37-year-old Lian sketches to kill time. His creations, which can sometimes take up to 20 minutes to complete, typically include the people he sees on public transport.  He says “The public commute presents a unique and safe setting to practise what I love.”

The adjunct lecturer at Singapore’s Ngee Ann Polytechnic is part of a small group, known as the Commute Sketchers, who document their surroundings while traveling on trains, buses and other forms of transport.

Then they digitize their doodle sketches and share them world-wide on Facebook.  Some of their sketches have gone on display at several train stations and bus interchanges. And their sketches and doodle art may soon get even more exposure on the internet!

We all have waiting time to kill – waiting for an event we know will happen to us. The northeast folks were told of an impending Nor’easter days before it hit.  In Florida, we are told of the Hurricane days before it hits us.  I flew for my job in the 1980’s  – every week I sat for hours on planes heading to Europe or California – lots of time to kill. On Drummond we stand and wait for the old-fashioned credit card machine at the grocery store to process our card.

The store owners Dale and Kelly, put an 8 x 10 card on the shelf that we will use to sign the receipt. Some of us doodle on the card while waiting for the receipt we need to sign.  

Today I am waiting in Florida again. I am just killing time until Monday when I go to the hospital for a heart valve replacement procedure.  

So, how do I pass time?  I DOODLE.  But this time, waiting for Monday to arrive, I am even more modern than the commuters in Singapore or the doodlers on Drummond Island. I digitally Doodle.  Often, starting my doodle with a digital photograph.  I will show you a few digital doodles I did just this week:

My Mom was a reader, a reciter.  If you did not grow up in a farm community of the Church of the Brethren and Mennonites, as I did, you may not know what a reader or reciter is.  Dunkards, as we Brethren were colloquially called, had readers.  At special church services, instead of preaching, the “reader” recited poems from memory. I always thought it was better than preaching anyway.  But, Mom was one of the “reciters” – she was the best, I must say –  could go on for nearly an hour reciting poem after poem – of course with the singing of hymns interspersed. 

What is poetry anyway? I looked it up on the internet:  Poetry is a type of literature, or artistic writing, that attempts to stir a reader’s imagination or emotions. The reader conveys this by carefully choosing and arranging words and intonations for emotion, meaning, sound, and effect.

I remember tough old German farmers wiping tears from their eye as Mom recited poems. She really brought meaning and emotion as she recited poems like this:

Gently, Lord, oh, gently lead us 

Through vale of tears, 

Though thou’st decreed us, 

Till our last great change appears.

Angel voices sweetly singing, 

Echoes through the blue dome ringing, 

News of wondrous gladness bringing… 

Ah, ’tis heaven at last!

Why in the world am I telling you all of that – I guess the impact of the first 20 years of our lives are the foundation for what we are – and 20 years of the full immersion in the Brethren faith stayed with me even through careers and marriages that took me to enjoy many other lives and geographies – my mind can still go back home and vicariously through the my apple computer’s digits, ponder early years.

So, I got to playing around with Photoshop – took a selfie – and created four surreal images that needed an explanation or a descriptive title – I thought of poetry as a way to do that. That is how I got to the subject of poetry: 

From The Song of Hiawatha by Henry W Longfellow