Photogathering Has Moved

The Photogathering blog, events listing, and meeting information is now at photogathering.org.

Photographers At Artomatic - Closing June 23, 2012

Artomatic in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia, will close this Saturday night, June 23, 2012. With it closes our famous Camera Obscura Installation (day viewing only) and the exhibits by 5 of our group members.

Press:

• John Anderson  Artomatic: Out of Vitamins Washington City Paper
• George Smyth, Artomatic Camera Obscura f/295 Pinhole Forum
• Michael O'Sullivan,  Artomatic Returns to Crystal City Washington Post
• Mark Jenkins, Galleries: Artomatic Entertainment, Washington Post
• Smithsonian Studio Arts Blog Real-Life Camera Obscura
• Tammy Vitale (blog), Artomatic Interview #14 Joanna Knox Yoder

Individual Exhibits and Site Links:

Barry Schmetter

Tube,  pigment ink print

Carole Hollander

Last Look, silver gelatin print - Dad Remains, cremains print

George L. Smyth

Braddock Project (part of), bromoil

Joanna Knox Yoder

Skeleton Key, tintype

Scott Davis

Pearl Dive Vespa, pigment print

Camera Obscura at Artomatic

The camera obscura is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.

Camera Obscura at Artomatic 2012, photo by David Struewing

Members of The Photo Gathering created a Camera Obscura using a room at Artomatic 2012 in Crystal City, Arlington, VirginIA. The walls were painted black and the windows covered with black opaque paper with a small hole for a meniscus lens. Light passes through the lens, and the scene outside the window, National Airport and The Potomac River, is projected onto the opposite wall and ceiling (painted white). The live image is upside down and backwards (most is on the ceiling).

image Library of Congress

The Camera Obscura will be at Artomatic (free) during daylight hours through June 23, 2012

Wednesdays and Thursdays: noon – 10 pm Fridays and Saturdays: noon – 1 amSundays: noon – 5 pmClosed Mondays and Tuesdays

Artomatic Site and Directions

Bromoil Demonstration May 3, 2012 by George L. Smyth

The one sentence explanation of how to make a Bromoil print is that the silver that forms the image in a traditional darkroom print is removed and replaced with lithographic ink by striking it repeatedly with an ink-charged brush.  Of course there is more to it, as will be demonstrated by George L Smyth on 3 May. George has given talks and workshops on the Bromoil process and an example of his work can be found at http://GeorgeSmyth.com.

George Smyth's work will be showcased at The Glenview Mansion Art Gallery in Rockville, Maryland June, 2012. Glenview Mansion June 2012 Exhibit

Please Do Not Sit Here

Welcome Home

Pinhole Demonstration April 5, 2012

Joshua Dunn will demonstrate and the pinhole camera and it's many variations.
George L. Smyth will display prints from the sieve pinhole variation.


Following the presentations there will be a gear swap and print sharing. 


http://www.pinholeday.org/support/?pid=faq by Larry Bullis


Pinhole photography is similar to "common photography" in most respects but differs in that the camera used has no lens. Instead, it has a very small aperture which projects an image upon the sensitized material (film or paper). This necessitates different ways of working (primarily because the exposures must be relatively long) and produces images which differ from lens images in several important respects.

Where a lens forms an image by bringing rays of light coming to it from each point in the subject to a common focus, the pinhole does not focus at all. Instead, it acts as a center of projection.

Speaking practically, a ray of light from any point in the subject, passing through the pinhole, will intersect the film in only one place. Another ray of light, coming from a different point in the subject and passing through the hole will strike the film in a different place. The accumulation of all rays of light passing through the hole will thus form an image at the film plane. If the film plane were moved forward or backward, the image would still be there, but it would be smaller or larger depending upon where it were located.

Because the hole is actually not truly a point, it allows more than just one ray from each point in the subject to strike the film. We could say that it passes a small bundle of rays from each point. This is one reason why pinhole images are characteristically softer than lens images. The other reason is that some of the rays encounter the edge of the hole and are diffracted; they bend.

Since there is no focus, the sharpness of the image (such as it is; it is always somewhat "soft") is uniform from near distance to far. In other words, there is no limitation of depth of field as there is in lens photography. Very near objects (closer than the pinhole to film distance) will however become softer due to divergence of the rays coming from each point.

Information and Links:

Worldwide Pinhole Day is April 29, 2012 (the last Sunday in April)
http://www.pinholeday.org/org/

Wiki on Pinhole: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera

Wet Plate Demonstration March 1

Photographers Barry Schmetter and Joshua Dunn will be demonstrating the wet plate process.

There will be a small charge for plates made during this demonstration. No charge for attending.
Space may be limited. Kindly RSVP to largeformatgathering@gmail.com.

Links for wet plate information:
Scully & Osterman
Wikipedia Collodion Process

George Smyth, Victorian banker
Copyright George Smyth 2010

Skull In Cabinet
Copyright Barry Schmetter 2011

Window Still Life
Copyright Barry Schmetter 2012

Fifth Year and New Location at VisArts At Rockville

This month Photo Gathering for Large Format and Alternative Processes will begin it's fifth year. Our new location will be at VisArts At Rockville on the 3rd floor in the photography suite.

February Gathering: Telephoto Lens For About A Dollar

Bill Seelig, engineer and photographer, will demonstrate the telephoto lens he made for his 4x5 camera for a dollar. Precise and easy to follow instructional handouts will be available.

John Hoover will show and discuss his recent work from India in advance of his solo exhibit opening at Montgomery College February 8, 2012

HINDUSTAN - A Solo Exhibit by John Hoover at Montgomery College

Please join us Wednesday February 8th from 7-9 PM at the Montgomery College Arts & Technology Center Gallery at the Rockville Campus to celebrate the opening of John Hoover's solo exhibition “Hindustan.”  The exhibition is comprised of photographs from his recent travels to India. John Hoover is the co-founder of The Large Format and Alternative Processes Gathering.

Untitled © John Hoover 2011 All rights reserved

John Hoover began his career as a traditional black and white photographer and used a large format view camera for portrait, landscape and architectural image making. With the evolution of digital photography John incorporated the new technology into his work.

A shaping force in the development of John’s creative vision was the training he received in large format photography, which John credits as teaching him the patience and contemplation necessary to distill the essence and emotion of the world he sees through careful composition.

For five years John worked as the Director of Photography at The Metropolitan Center for the Visual Arts (VisArts), a non-profit community arts center located in Rockville, Maryland, starting first as a volunteer and then moving into a full time staff position. The photography program at VisArts originally began as a traditional darkroom facility staffed with volunteers and offered a handful of photography classes for adults. John worked diligently to expand the scope and capabilities of the program. It was here that John co-founded the Photo Gathering For Large Format and Alternative Processes.

By forging partnerships with both corporate sponsors and professional photographers, John obtained donations of equipment and materials which enabled VisArts to outfit a professional shooting studio and offer state of the art digital and traditional printing capabilities. John expanded the photography educational program by organizing classes, workshops, and seminars led by internationally renowned photographers such as Bob Krist, Bruce Barnbaum, Joyce Tenneyson, and Clay Blackmore, thus further enriching the photo experience at VisArts. John initiated an annual Photography Exhibition curated by Frank Goodyear of the National Portrait Gallery, and professional photographers from the Cannon Explorers of Light, Clay Blackmore, Eddie Tapp and others, which brought the work of aspiring photographers as well as seasoned professionals to the art center.

For his work at VisArts John was awarded the 2007 Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Award by the Montgomery County Arts and Humanities Council, recognizing the contributions he made in improving the Photography Department to the point of national recognition among professional photographers and industry specialists.

In 2009, in partnership with The Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) and funded by a grant from the Trawick Foundation, John taught photography to adolescents enrolled in the Leadership Empowerment and Action Program (LEAP), a youth development program for foster and adopted youth and their families in Montgomery County. In addition to teaching John collaborated in the design of the photography curriculum and hired the staff of photography educators who participated in this highly successful and rewarding community outreach project.

Currently John is the Instructional Lab Director for the Photography Department at Montgomery College following 4 years as an Adjunct Professor of Photography at the college. He is a working freelance and assignment photographer specializing in portraits, travel, architectural, and event photography.

Link to John Hoover's website jhooverphotoimages.com

February 2, 2012 - Bill Seelig Demonstrates Tonal Separation

Bill Seelig will demonstrate and lead a discussion about separating a continuous tone black and white negative onto multiple high contrast negatives. The negatives are then copied on film to make positives. Combinations of the films are then put in registration and used to make a variety of prints.

Bill Seelig is a Rockville, Maryland based photographer best known for his award winning work with nudes, projections, distortions, mirrors, and landscape photography using 35mm and 4X5 film formats with fixed focal length lenses.

January 5, 2012 - Carole Hollander demonstrates registration methods for multiple emulsion printing processes.

Gum bichromate prints with multiple layers of emulsion require a method of aligning the paper and negative. Registration of paper and negative is also used when combining hand-coated processes such as cyanotype and palladium, platinum over gum, etc. Costly pin and punch registration systems exist to ensure precision alignment. Other methods include crosshair marks and tape, matching thumbtack holes, and eyeballing on a light table.  Carole Hollander will demonstrate how to make and use a system that uses a simple 2-hole paper punch and quarter inch pins that is fast and unfailingly repeatable for both split back frames and vacuum frames. 


Carole Hollander is a Washington D.C. based photographer specializing in alternative and historic photographic processes.  She also works with Gum Bichromate, Anthotypes, Vandykes, and Cyanotype printing  processes. Her work can be seen at carolehollander.com