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