Meeting Minutes: Women in Focus, April 14, 2010
Taken By: Valerie Gruner
Meeting presided over by our president, Gittel Price
Members and Guests Present: Gittel Price, Amira Price, Lynn Henderson, Frank Niemeir, Denise Savage, Cindy Michaels, Hazel Berger, Valerie Gruner, Kimberly Conner, Virginia Twinam-Smith, Ruth Gogel, Terri Kelly, Jan Kapoor, Alicia K. Gelford-Holt, Myrtie Cope, Joanne Green, Gail Des Jardin, Peggy McKinney, Margery Diamond, someone who scribbled, Carol Butz, Eka Shapatava, Marty Maxwell, Laura Busvioc, and Becky Ollinger.
Guests and New Members:
Kimberly Connor is a teacher at our host, Atlanta Girls School, and she enjoys photographing flowers.
Leigh Rogers is a student at the Atlanta Girls School, and she likes to photograph animals.
Terri Kelley enjoys nature photography.
Frank Niemeir used to be a photographer for the AJC, and he is a friend of our speaker, John Mariana.
Lynn Henderson is a former student of John Mariana.
Members in Shows:
Until April 23, members in the Atlanta Photography Group’s Photographer’s Choice show are Anne Berry, Bobi Diamond, Jill Eidiger, Joanne Green, Valerie Gruner, Jan Kapoor, and Virginia Twinam-Smith. Big news: Joanne’s piece sold!
In the Roswell Heritage Exhibit, at the Cultural Arts Center in Roswell, Jan Kapoor has five pieces, Hazel Berger has two pieces, Toni James has at least one piece, Kate Lynch has at least one piece, and Gittel Price has six pieces. One of Gittel’s was awarded 1st Place.
Ruth Gogel has twenty pieces showing at the Unitarian Church in Lawrenceville.
Virginia Twinam-Smith has a permanent exhibit installed at her son-in-law’s psychology practice.
Valerie Gruner has two pieces in the Atlanta Artists Center’s Dogwood Show.
Hazel Berger has a solo exhibit at the Roswell Teahouse opening May 7, 12-2.
Cindy Michaels has a solo exhibit at Rev Coffee in Smyrna.
Lucinda Bunnen has a show opening at MOCA GA on April 23, 6:30-8:30. Her Artist’s Talk will be on May 12.
New WIF Board Members:
Two members were put up for election to fill Board positions; Hazel Berger for Vice President, and Myrtie Cope for Treasurer. The membership voted yea, to install both ladies in these positions.
Atlanta Celebrates Photography: October 2010
WIF has three exhibits planned for 2010 ACP.
Our juried show will be at the Ferst Center at Georgia Tech, and run in September and October, which means submissions will be due at the July meeting (not August).
Our artist choice show at the top of the Westin downtown also runs September and October.
The Digital Arts artist choice show is the month of October.
Now is the time to book venues for solo exhibits for during ACP, your local coffee shop or bistro, offices, wherever you can. It’s really cool to have your own exhibit during ACP and a listing in the ACP book, which goes out everywhere.
Old Car City Field Trip:
A field trip to photograph out at Old Car City for April 24 has been temporarily scrubbed because Old Car City has closed. Gittel has some people working on getting in, and an email will go out when another Saturday morning can be scheduled.
The tools of Constant Contact and PayPal are being set up for WIF.
Atlanta Photographic Society 40th Anniversary:
On Thursday, April 22, at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation Church, APS will celebrate their 40th anniversary. There will be an exhibit of club member’s winning images from over the past 40 years. Julian Cox, Photography Curator for the High Museum, will be the keynote speaker.
Serenbe Photography Center:
Hazel Berger went to the Serenbe Photography Center and would be pleased to talk to anyone who may want to know about her experience, how they operate, etc. She advised that when one goes down there, bring a camera, as the Serenbe area is quite lovely.
North Georgia Photographer’s Council Shoot Out:
The Shoot Out is a one day event, a kind of photographic scavenger hunt for photography groups. This year, it will be held on Saturday, October 23, at Berry College in Rome. It costs $100 for a group to participate. At the end of the day, images are compiled and judged, and prizes are awarded.
The WIF membership present voted yea to participate.
Speaker: John Mariana, Fine Art Techniques in Photoshop & Adobe Camera Raw
(Secretary’s Disclaimer: Since your secretary does not work in Photoshop, the technical notes may be a bit sketchy.)
When looking at images in his capacity as a juror for competitions, John is often struck by how some images could be greatly improved by a few simple post processing steps. On his own work, he does a lot of post processing. He is currently showing his work in the Undisturbed Nature show. He has two books out, Fine Art Techniques I and II, which cover all of the tips he showed us.
John proposed that we think about how we learn. We begin with the mechanical capture, then move to creativity. A novice works towards becoming an artist by moving from copying other’s ideas, capturing their own images, to composing, and finally getting to creative expression through your images.
“You can’t depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus.” - Mark Twain
Fine art photography requires determination and equipment.
John encouraged us to be thinking about HDR (high definition resolution), the combining of several exposures to create an image full of detail.
Once a month, John sends out emailed Fine Art Tips through a yahoo group. Details on this, and other endeavors John is up to can be found on his website, <http://www.MarianaPhotography.com>.
Three Steps Critical for Image Enhancement:
1. How the image looks from left to right
2. Contrast
3. Corner burns and edge burns
Tips:
Combine soft and sharp.
Enhance color and enhance contrast.
Burn (darken) and dodge (lighten) elements of your image.
Create interest in green spring photographs by adding color that changes them to autumn.
Straighten leaning walls (due to lens curve).
Enhance the mood of an image by playing around with the color and contrast.
Shoot in Raw format, as many tools require the detail Raw delivers.
In Adobe Camera Raw, John approaches each photograph concerning himself with these adjustments:
1. Exposure
2. Distortion
3. Color
4. Dodge and Burn
5. Crop
6. Clone
7. Contrast
8. Dodge and Burn again
One can open a jpeg or a tif in Adobe Camera Raw. Save Adobe Camera Raw images as tifs to move into Photoshop.
Adobe Camera Raw Tool Tips:
The fill light slider illuminates in shadows.
Hold down the alt (option or command on Mac) key while moving the recovery slider, and it takes out white.
The vibrance slider increases color saturation of lightly saturated colors in your image, and the saturation slider saturates all colors.
Work exposure, fill light, vibrance, recovery, and tone curve.
Click on the targeted adjustment tool, then move the cursor on the image to adjust areas. Left or down, and the area decreases in tone. Right or up increases the tone.
Don’t be shy, just get in there and play around with the buttons and sliders to see what can happen to your image.
In Photoshop:
To straighten walls: Click on Select All, click Edit, Transform, then Distort. Distort moves the entire image when you move the cursor. After that step, Select All, Edit, Transform, then Warp. Warp allows you to move parts of your image with the cursor, cleaning up what cannot be achieved through Distort.
In Image Mode, click on Lab Color. Go to Image, then Apply Image. In there you will find a myriad of blend modes. Click on modes to see how they affect your image. Cool.
At the end, go back to Image, then Mode, and click on RGB mode and save.
16 bit is better than 8 bit. But, needs to be 8 bit to be saved as a jpeg.
Pro photo RGB is maximum color.
Hold down the alt key when opening a file, as this will open a copy of your image, thus saving your original.
John gave us a marvelous demonstration of using these techniques (and others your secretary was too unlearned to follow) in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop on all sorts of photographs. Oohs and ahhs were abundant.
He had books for purchase, and graciously sold books on promise for ladies without their checkbooks. Nice guy. Great program.