Meeting Minutes: Women in Focus, September 9, 2009

Taken By: Valerie Gruner

Meeting presided over by our president, Gittel Price.

Members and Guests Present: Linda Rathke, Peggy McKinney, Dana S. Kemp, Tiffany Weigel, Myrtie Cope, Jennie Heldermnan, Hazel Berger, Ruth Gogel, Phyllis Waugh, Valerie Gruner, Cindy Michaels, Chris Mitts, Gail Des Jardin, Sara Lindkrantz, Maryanne Mitchell, Jan Kapoor, Virginia Twinam Smith, Vicki Bethel, Brenda May, Denice Lee, Debra Booth, Lucinda Bunnen, Ledra Davis, and Sheila Robinette.

I suspect more members than those listed were in attendance, but they did not sign in. This gives me a chance to remind members to sign in, and please write legibly.

Members in Shows:

Maryanne Mitchell is in the Zendolite show at the Zen Center, and in the Snapdragon Gallery “Fresh Perspectives” show.

In the Fay Gold Selects show at Atlanta Photography Group are Sheila Robinette, Debra Booth, Dana S. Kemp, Barbara Davis, Anne Berry, and Valerie Gruner. Opening is September 18, 7:30, closes October 30.

Jan Kapoor will be showing her images from Japan at the Roswell Teahouse in Roswell October 6-31.

Cindy Sheffield Michaels’ solo show will be up at the Archive Gallery until October 19.

Chris Mitts is in the Cameran Hampton show in Greensboro.

Dana Kemp has work at Backstage in College Park, opening October 1, and pieces in Mary Stanley’s show “Obsession,” locale to be determined.

Ruth Gogel has two pieces at the downtown library and two in the South Cobb Arts Alliance national show.

Hazel Berger has work in Anna Les at the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce.

Sara Lindkrantz has work at the Southern Appalachian Artist Guild in Blue Ridge.

Lucinda Bunnen is in the Spruill Gallery’s “On the Flip Side” show.

Gail Des Jardin is in the Showcase student exhibition.

Joanne Green is in the Atlanta Photography Society’s show at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta on Cliff Valley Way.

Call for Entries:

Information about entering the Roswell Photography Society open show is on their website. There are entry categories and prize money.

“Picturing Home” is an upcoming exhibit at the Visual Arts Center at Emory, to be juried by Julien Cox. The deadline for entry is November 3, and Gittel will be sending out an e-mail with the details.

Contrary to original plans, there will be a Southeastern Flower Show this year! Be on the lookout for their e-mails.

WIF ACP Shows:

Envelopes with ladies’ submissions to the juried show were at the meeting, and those present got to see if their work was chosen. If you were not at the meeting, contact Gittel to check on the state of your submission.

All the information about venues, dates, times, etc. is on the website, it was all beautifully detailed in the meeting’s agenda, and now, I’m going to give an abbreviated rundown.

Artist’s Choice at Digital Arts Studio: Drop off - the week of September 21 // Show dates - Thursday, October 1 through Saturday, October 31 // Reception - Saturday, October 10, 6-10 PM // Pick up dates - Monday, November 2 - Friday November 6.

Without Borders (Artist’s Choice) at Stuart McClean Gallery: Drop off - Saturday, September 26, 10AM-12 noon at Lorikay’s loft. An email was sent out with directions, and you may call Lorikay at cell 678-485-9690 or 404-525-9690 to make other than Saturday arrangements. // Show dates - Friday, October 2 through Friday, October 23 // Reception - Friday, October 2, 7-9 PM // Pick up - Saturday, October 24 by 3:00PM.

WIF XVI Juried Show at Kai Lin Art: Drop off - Thursday, October 15 // Show dates - Friday, October 23 through Friday, November 20 // Reception - Friday, October 23, 7-11 PM // Pick up date - Saturday, November 21.

“Paper Dolls” juried show at Atlanta Girls School: Drop off - for judging, a framed 16x20 piece at the September 9 meeting. // Show dates - Through October. // Reception - Lecture on Tuesday, October 6 at 7 PM by Duane Neil, followed by a reception. The lecture will cost $10, and they would like RSVP’s to get a count of attendees. // Pick up date - TBA.

FEES - IMPORTANT: the entry fee is $20 apiece for the Digital Arts, Stuart McClean and Kai Lin shows. If you still need to pay, you can send your check to our treasurer, Joanne Green via the WIF PO Box address on the website.

Kai Lin Art Show: additional details

Normal operations of the gallery provide for a 20% trade discount to designers, etc. At the meeting, we voted to allow the discount on our pieces.

Please send an email with your name, the title of each piece accepted into the exhibit, and the price you want to get for each piece to Debra Booth (digitographer@comcast.net, or debrabooth@comcast.net). Do not include the commission in the price; the gallery will add the commission onto the price you specify. Please send this email no later than October 1 so that we have it for compiling the master list for the show.

Future Meetings:

October: The meeting is on Wednesday, October 14 at Lumiere in Peachtree Hills. The exhibit on display, “Dorthea Lange and Her Impact,” includes work by Dorthea Lange, Ron Partridge, and Ruth Marion Baruch. The exhibit runs September 28 through November 14. The gallery is located at 425 Peachtree Hills Ave. Building 5 Suite 29B, Atlanta, GA 30305. Ladies interested in attending this special showing just for us signed up at the meeting. Contact Gittel if you would like to attend and weren’t at the meeting to sign up. This is so we can have an idea of how many ladies will be there.

November: The meeting is on Wednesday, November 11, at 6:00 rather than 7:00 at an Atlantic Station Law firm to see a special exhibit. A sign up sheet was passed around at this month’s meeting, and an email will be sent to confirm the list. We’re thinking the limit of attendees might have to be about 25. We will meet in the lobby of the Wachovia Bank.

December: Holiday Party and Print Swap. The date is Wednesday, December 9, and Lorikay has graciously offered up her loft as the location again this year. It will be catered, and it’s just for us ladies. More details coming later.

Lightroom 2 Demonstration, by Ledra Davis

WIF member Ledra Davis gave us a great demonstration of Lightroom 2, an all-in-one computer environment that provides for photo organization and basic development of photographic images. It works seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Elements, and allows flexibility in manipulating images. The program does not require knowledge of Photoshop, and though it is not a complete substitute for Photoshop, it can come close.

The cost of Lightroom is $299, but if one qualifies for an academic discount the program can be had for $99. It’s also possible to download a free 30 day demo of the program from Adobe.

Ledra said that Lightroom can be thought of as Photoshop-lite for editing, but where it excels is its organizational possibilities. A key plus is that the program is extremely hard drive friendly, in that it can save the same photo in several places without taking up any more memory than saving it once.

Lightroom has five modules: Library is for storage and organization, Develop is where one can edit and otherwise work on photos, Slide Show can be customized to build slide shows, Print interfaces with one’s printers, and Web facilitates website updates. Ledra concentrated on only demonstrating Library and Develop.

Library organizes images in thumbnails, and it provides for a library of all photographs and Collections that the user can build to suit. To use Library, one imports images, and tags each image with keywords. After that, one can type in a keyword, and all of the photos tagged thusly will pop up together, nearly instantly. It was amazing to see it happen. The program also provides a list of all the keywords one has used to jog one’s memory.

There were a lot of tricks and ways to compare images, including “compare view” that put up two images at once, larger, for close comparison. There are other sorting tools to flag images, like numbers of stars, colors, anyway one wishes.

Develop employs sliders for editing. It provides a full History of every step one has taken on a photograph, this History never goes away, and the History is unlimited, unlike in Photoshop. Curves works with levers, and some of the editing tools were very cool, indeed.

Heaven knows Ledra demonstrated much more than what I managed to take notes on fully. As a person who is completely baffled by the intricacies of Photoshop, Lightroom’s Develop program seemed 100 times more intuitive, and its speed in all that could be done in Library was phenomenal, making Bridge seem very clunky and inept.

Ledra will be teaching a day-long course on Lightroom 2 in conjunction with The Art School In Sandy Springs on Saturday, October 24. The link to the class is http://www.theartschoolinsandysprings.com/PHOTOGRAPHY.html. You can register for the class and get instructions for paying for the class at http://www.theartschoolinsandysprings.com/REGISTRATION.html.