Pop-up photo review success

Thursday night, I teamed up with some photog pals to do a quasi-impromptu photo review down at Imbibe.  Result: success.  I’ve wanted to get some critical feedback on my work for a few years and meeting up with the Foto:RE peeps a couple weeks ago, I suggested a regular meet-up.  Suggesting is the better part of volunteering, so I said I would kick off the first meet-up.  And pretty much any event is best initiated at a bar, because worst-case-scenario: you’re drinking a beer alone at a bar with all your gear in tow. Not so bad.

Here, (L-R) Joe Martz, Karl Griffiths-Fulton, Mark Walton, and I are reviewing Karl’s print.  Karl said when he returns home from photographing in a war zone, he needs to decompress and not photograph any people for a while.  This print was made during one of those periods and was inspired by a war poem, that Karl also brought along.

The intent with this social experiment is to do these meet-ups on a regular cadence and improve, so we picked third Thursday of the month.  As I learned from the kwartzlab experience, any day you pick will be bad for somebody, so you just pick a day and roll with it.  The ever-awesome Jen C. King is setting up the meet for April: location TBD.  These type of meet-ups are the heartbeat of an organization and really facilitate the community building that makes all good things possible.

My limited marketing budget in action.  Thanks to our awesome server, Edith.

Mark has embraced film, snapping (ahem) up second hand cameras everywhere.

Photo within this photo is Mark Walton’s.

(L-R) Bert Matzek, Joe Martz, and Jen King are looking at this shot of a shepherd boy that Bert captured in Nepal. 

I wrote names down so we would just go in order as people arrived.  The format was one photo per photog, 5 minutes on the timer, and total honesty.

Here’s the photo I brought for review.  This is from the BANDALOOP show at the Centre in the Square season opening event in October last year.  I shot this aerial acrobatics show with my belly against the wall of the building so I could capture the artists against the evening sky, which disappeared to white as I intentionally over-exposed.  The performers seemed like human musical notes on a distorted staff of wires.  The feedback I got was to remove the parts of the building that do appear along the bottom of the frame to balance the top and bottom negative spaces and let the figure float.  Great, I’m on it.

We got through the reviews and then, happily, there was music. Doubly happy, the music was made by Tessa Elise, who plays and teaches music, and who also organizes the open jams at Imbibe.  We finally meet in person!

Open Jam at Imbibe goes hand in hand with Artist of the Week, and this week’s artist is another new friend, musician/photog Meghan Weber.  Meghan came by the table to chat and meet and then she was off to get on the Open Jam list.  Lots going on.  You can buy these photos by Meghan for $2/ea.

This great place is always packed.

Joe and Bert.

More of Mark’s film gear…

and the man himself, Mark Walton.

Karl Griffiths-Fulton, in the house.

If you’re a reasonably serious shooter, join us at the April meet-up.  Stay tuned to this channel (and by that, I mean follow me on twitter @DarinTheGreat) for deets.

This is what community looks like.

DW