Over the last few years, Sasha Vasiljev has put in an annual appearance at SSCC, either as speaker or judge. Many of us still remember his extraordinary images and the stories of his treks in Nepal and the Himalayas. The portraits of people he encountered on those adventures were as memorable as his breathtaking landscapes. Those portraits were on exhibit last year at the Watergate Gallery downtown, where Sasha regularly exhibits. In that welcoming space, we’ve also seen Sasha’s delicate seascapes, his evocative images of the cloud forests of Ecuador, as well as a series of finely crafted still lifes that frame views from his home in Washington’s tallest building.

What magical places will Sasha introduce us to in his presentation this month? You’ll have to come to the October 2 meeting to find out! By way of background, Sasha is not only an award-winning photographer but is also codirector 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.

In Sasha’s own education, he first 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 moving to the US over a decade ago, Sasha’s work has been exhibited in galleries and acquired by many private collections internationally. 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 numerous magazines, such as Nature’s Best Photography Magazine, Fine Gardening, Washingtonian, Orchids Magazine, and Ecuador Infinito Magazine.

In 2015, Sasha plans eco-photo tours to Ecuador in March and August, to Cost Rica in June, to Nepal in April and September, and more prosaically, to Maine in June. See http://naturephotographytours.com/ for all the details. In addition to these tours, Sasha also offers numerous workshops locally as well as private instruction. The workshops cover such topics as headshots and portraits, editing with Lightroom, and two levels of photography basics. For complete workshop descriptions and registration information, go to: http://alexandervasiljev.com.

SSCC FALL SOCIAL HOUR

Members new & old are getting together

on Thursday, October 2

from 6:45 to 7:30

before our regular speaker’s meeting

Join us for the cheer!

Refreshments, of course!

A White House photographer talks about White House photographers: that’s our September speaker, Dennis Brack. He’s covered 10 presidential administrations and has known the inside scoop for 50 years. During his time as a news photographer, Dennis worked with, drank with, and laughed with many of the colorful characters that photograph the presidents and their families. Over the decades, he’s interviewed countless photographers to collect their stories. The result is his book, Presidential Picture Stories: Behind the Cameras at the White House. Having been awarded dozens of 5-star reviews, the book delivers a fast history of the news picture business and a collection of delightful stories about the characters behind the cameras. We’ll hear some of these stories and how the book came about.

Dennis Brack notes that though his clients have changed over the years, LIFE and Newsweek were among the most important. For TIME, he averaged a picture a week for 23 years. As the Washington photographer for Black Star, he’s a member of the White House ISP pool, which consists of the eight major photo agencies that travel with the President in Washington. A major story for Dennis Brack was the coverage of the first Gulf War. In one week, his photographs were on the covers of TIME,Newsweek, US News, Paris Match, and many other magazines throughout the world.

For 25 years, Dennis Brack was the secretary /treasurer of the US Senate Standing Committee of Press Photographers. This 6-member committee determines the photographic coverage of the House and Senate, the conventions, and the inauguration. He was also President of the White House News Photographers Association for many years. Recently, he was the Lifetime Achievement Award Winner and honored at the White House News Photographers Association Eyes of History Gala. Like many TIME Magazine photographers, Dennis Brack has given his photographic collection to The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas. The transparencies and negatives will be preserved to be a source for future historians. The Briscoe Center has sponsored a major exhibition of Dennis Brack’s photographs.

For a quick view of Dennis Brack’s work, visit www.dennisbrack.com

Photos courtesy of Bob Catlett

Walt Calahan returns this spring to SSCC not as judge, but as speaker. His topic on May 1 is “The Myth of Thinking Outside the Box.” By this, Walt means that innovation begins and never ends by “mastering the box,” not thinking outside of it. He says we know this as photographers because the camera is our metaphoric “box”; if we don’t master the camera, none of our ideas outside of the camera will be captured successfully by the camera.

This is a viewpoint that Walt puts in practice not only in his own photography but also as a teacher of photography. As an adjunct instructor, he teaches photography for the art departments of both Stevenson University and McDaniel College. He feels that teaching helps insure a love for photography in the next generation of image makers.

Walt Calahan’s career has propelled him on adventures that demand superb mastery of the “box.” His photography assignments have taken him under the Atlantic Ocean aboard a U.S. Navy Trident submarine, down lava tube caves in Idaho, into surgical clinics for Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan, canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia and the great northern woods of Canada, and being launched off the deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. As if that weren’t enough adventure, Walt has photographed such subjects as the tumult of the Romanian revolution.

Hundreds of magazines have used Walt’s work, including the National Geographic Society, Boys’ Life, Time, Fortune, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. General Electric, Yamaha, The Washington Performing Arts Society, Hillel Foundation, and Harvard Business School, among others, have commissioned him to illustrate their publications and advertisements.

Walt graduated with honors from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications and then earned a Master of Liberal Arts degree from McDaniel College.

Walt’s Website