By the time our next speaker, Dave Burns, appears on November 7, he will just have returned from safari in Africa – again. An award-winning photographer, Dave specializes in wildlife, travel, and landscapes. Though he was born and raised in DC, Dave now lives in Boston; SSCC undertook considerable logistics juggling to bring him to town for our November meeting.

Dave’s passions range from the beauty of the African savanna to the streets of Paris. Over the past 20 years, he has traveled to more than 25 countries, professionally chronicling his experiences through a camera lens. His first safari in Africa was in 1997, after a Mt. Kilimanjaro climb, when he got a taste for the magic of the people, wildlife, and scenery of this special place. Dave shares his love of adventure travel with other photographers through his company Dave Burns Photo Tours.

Providing clients with unique travel experiences in exotic locations, he shows his groups how to capture amazing images of landscapes and wildlife while learning efficient, on-location, digital workflow.

Classically trained in the black and white darkroom and the Zone System, Dave presently works digitally from capture to print. He also experiments with different technologies and approaches. In fact, his infrared photography – with its unpredictable tones and dream-like effects – is what brought him to our attention in the first place. Dave’s traditional training, combined with the organizational and planning skills gained in his professional background in software engineering management, give him a unique edge in running successful photo tours.

A member of the North American Nature Photography Association, Dave has exhibited his work in many galleries, and his photographs have been welcomed into numerous private collections. As Dave says, “Safari njema.”

See the Education Page or go right to the slides here

Join us for our second Open Forum/Discussion Night. This month we will be sharing our photographs of “Patterns.” Unlike our competition topics, the definition of the subject of “Patterns” is open to individual interpretation. You can use this opportunity to share your story behind the images or to request a critique. Constructive criticism from the audience will ONLY be made upon the photographer’s request.

Each person will be limited to one photograph, either print OR digital, to share with the group. You can bring your printed photos as prints, matted, or framed, but please mount or tape the print to a board for easy display in the light box. The digital images will be shared on the laptop; please bring them with you on a CD or USB drive for easy transfer.

– Joe Coughlin

On Saturday, November 2, 2013, I will lead a field trip to the Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River on Rte 1 in Hareford Co. MD for interested SSCC members.

The Dam has been a favorite location for viewing eagles, great blue herons and many pother species of birds, especially in Nov. & Dec. There is a new Fisherman’s Park viewing area just below the Dam that is the central viewing location for visitors and photographers. The eagles are typically more numerous at this time but can vary from day to day. There are rookeries of herons across the river. Sometimes there are eagles roosting in the trees around the parking lot just waiting for another meal or eating their latest catch. The birds are there most of the time feeding on the fish below the Dam. When the Dam needs to generate peak time electricity it opens some gates to let more water out and with that comes more fish from the storage pond on the other side of the Dam and with that the eagles go into a feeding frenzy. This typically occurs early in the morning and early evening at peak demand times. However, that event can vary from day to day.

Because most of the photo opportunities, except for ant around the parking lot, are in the center of the river, below the Dam and / or on the other side of the river, I would recommend telephoto lenses with tripods. A simple point and shoot camera w/ a fixed focal length lens or a small telephoto lens may not be enough for good close up shots. Your call!

A good description of the site and its photo opportunities is on the following sites:

http://www.harfordbirdclub.org/conowingo.html
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=205101

For those who may want to car pool, we will meet at 8:00am in the White Oak strip mall in the back of the parking lot, by N. H. Ave., of the Sears Automotive Center, on the left of the entrance road off New Hampshire Ave., just south of the Rte 29 and facing N.H. Ave. (east Silver Spring, Montgomery Co). I have a silver Toyota Avalon and will have a SSCC sign on my windshield and wil be standing outside my car. We will leave the parking lot at 8:30 sharp, as it will take about 1 ½ hours to get there.

Directions:

We will drive up Interstate 95, through the tunnel (toll) in Baltimore north to exit 74 (Rte 152 Mountain Rd.), or exit 77 (Rte 24 Veterans Memorial Hwy.) towards Bel Air. Right (North) on Rte 1 (Conowingo Dam Rd.) for several miles to Shuresville Rd., just before the dam, south of the river. Turn east (right) on Shuresville Road. After one-half mile, make the first (sharp) left, onto Shures Landing Road. Follow the road to the parking lot at the base of the dam, where it dead ends. Fisherman’s Park is right there. There is a pavilion there which provides shelter during bad weather. The parking lot is open every day of the year from at least 6:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. Shuresville Landing Road is steep and winding. There are public bathrooms at the pavilion. Just north of the dam, on Route 1, at the junction of Route 222, there is a store that has gas, coffee, and sandwiches. At the same intersection there is a small diner that provides cheap food. (Some of this description was taken from the Bird Club site above.)

Dress in layers and wear comfortable shoes for standing.

For those who may wish to visit other sites in the area, the Susquehanna State Park is about five miles to the south of the Dam and the city of Havre de Grace is about ten miles to the south, both on the Rive

For those interested in joining us please send me an e-mail with your name, e-mail address and phone number.

Rain date: Sunday, November 3rd.

Joe Coughlin

hjc12 (at) verizon.net

Our annual competition on the theme of “nature” deserves a special kind of judge with special sensitivities to images depicting this theme. Sasha Vasiljev is one rare pro who meets such a criterion. Sasha is no stranger to SSCC. In 2011, he judged an abstracts competition for us, and last year, as speaker, he shared his exhilarating photos of Nepal and the Himalyas.

His portraits – which were on exhibit at the Watergate Gallery in DC – were as striking as his landscapes. What was so surprising about his presentation last year is that we know Sasha primarily as a photographer of the rain forests of Costa Rica and South America. The full range of Sasha’s work covers conceptual photography, fine art, portraiture, wildlife, and commercial photography.

Sasha is not only an award-winning photographer but is also co-director of Nature & Photography Tours, LLC (www.NaturePhotographyTours.com), which is a boutique tour company specializing in nature, culture, and photography eco-travel. As an educator, he is on the faculty of The Washington School of Photography and Washington Studio School. He also independently teaches classes and workshops one-on-one or with groups and maintains a studio in Dupont Circle.

At the beginning of Sasha’s education, he concentrated on fine art, but ultimately received his degree in biology with a major in botany. He went on to curate major tropical orchid collections in his native Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. While living in Moscow, he had the opportunity to study photography under the mentorship of distinguished Russian landscape photographer Boris Mashkov.

Since immigrating to the US over a decade ago, Sasha’s work has been exhibited in galleries and has been acquired by many private collections worldwide. He is honored by having several of his images in the permanent collection at the Embassy of the Republic of Costa Rica in Washington, DC. His work has also been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has been published in the following magazines: Home & Décor, Nature’s Best Photography Magazine, Fine Gardening, Washingtonian, Orchids Magazine, and Ecuador Infinito Magazine.

This season, Sasha is offering a number of local workshops, including such topics as headshots and portraits, editing with Lightroom, and external flash photography. For complete workshop descriptions and registration information, go to: http://alexandervasiljev.com. In the spring of 2014, Sasha will be leading rainforest photo tours to Cost Rica and Ecuador in February, to Nepal in March, and to East Ecuador, from the Andes to the Amazon rainforest, in April. See http://naturephotographytours.com/ for all the details.

The stunning images by Irene Owsley of our own Potomac landscape, as well as her dramatic views of the far north, inspired us to select Irene Owsley as the October “nature” speaker.

A freelance photographer, Irene specializes in the outdoors and travel, particularly in northern regions. Her work has appeared in such magazines as Canoe & Kayak, Sierra, National Parks, Earthwatch, and Natural History, as well as in the publications of several conservation organizations. For the last three summers, she has been accepted as an “artist in residence” with a program called “Voices of the Wilderness,” working with wilderness rangers while camping and kayaking in remote glacial fjords. Selected images from these residencies will be shown in a traveling exhibition in 2014 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

Irene is active in the professional photography community. She serves as Treasurer on the national board of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) and is a founding board member of FotoWeek DC, which will celebrate its sixth festival this November. Currently, Irene is shooting the wild areas of metropolitan Washington, DC, particularly along the Potomac River, and producing large panoramic prints for corporate and residential interiors. She has exhibited her work throughout metro Washington, DC and has been profiled in Rangefinder, Photographer’s Forum, and Nikon World magazine.