Calendar
Join us for our First Wednesday Monthly Meeting. Our March 2025 topic will be All About Entering the Photography Exhibition at the San Diego County Fair with Lois Fong-Sakai.
Summer Pet-tacular at the 2025 San Diego County Fair
Hot Diggity Dog (and cat and fish and bird)! Whether you’ve got a furry friend, a scaly sidekick or a feathered flock, we all agree that pets rock! They bring joy, laughter, and a whole lot of love into our lives. They’re our snuggle buddies, our adventure partners, and our loyal companions. This summer we’ll celebrate the special bonds between humans and their pets. Join us as we turn the dog days of summer into the cat’s meow with thrilling rides, challenging games, mouth-watering food, incredible exhibits, and top-notch entertainment at our Summer Pet-tacular!
The 2025 season runs from June 11 – July 6, 2025.
The San Diego County Fair began in 1880. One of the treasured traditions and key components that continues to set the fair apart from other events and amusement venues is its participatory element. The community is the star of the show, and the public is encouraged to take part in the Fair by performing center stage as a community entertainer or submitting arts and hobbies through the fair’s competitive exhibition program. Entry materials and applications for public participation programs will be available starting in January, and admission and ticketed concerts and festivals are expected to go on sale in March.
Join us for a vibrant morning of photography at the Carlsbad Flower Fields! This is the perfect opportunity to capture stunning images for our Quarterly Competition theme: Patterns in Nature. The expansive fields of blooming ranunculus create mesmerizing textures, colors, and compositions that will inspire your creativity.
🎟 Tickets must be purchased in advance! Onsite ticket sales are not available.
💰 Cost:
- Adults: $27
- Seniors/Military: $25
🔗 Get your tickets here: https://www.theflowerfields.com/
Don’t miss this chance to explore the beauty of nature while honing your photography skills. We look forward to seeing you there! 🌸📸
The meeting will start promptly at 7 pm, but we’ll open the building at 6 pm for setup and social hour.
Join us for our Monthly Critique Night!
Our judge is Larry Vogel.
Members bring prints for critique on the third Wednesday of each month. Prints accepted by the Judge will hang for up to 2 months in the Photographic Arts Building gallery.
Visitors are welcome, however, submitting images for critique is available for members only. If you’d like more information about joining Darkroomers, please check out our membership page and email us if you have any questions.
About Larry
Larry Vogel has been involved in photography since 1976 and in recent years has become a multi-talented artist using several mediums to pursue and express his creative explorations, including, photography, ceramics, painting and sculpture. Larry has exhibited his work since 1979 and continues to exhibit nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite, California, the Susan Spiritus Gallery in Newport Beach, California, and the Africus, Johannesburg Biennale in 1997. Vogel’s work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections. He was awarded a photographic scholarship from The Friends of Photography for the Ansel Adams Photography Workshops in 1983, which Vogel says he was fortunate to be able to attend, as it was the last of the workshops that the renowned photographer, Ansel Adams, was alive to teach.
Larry is co-founder and past director of The Photographers’ Exchange, which has held monthly meetings for members since 1990. After leaving the group in 2011, Vogel created the Digital Photo Exchange, DPX, an online group which holds monthly critique sessions. Additionally, Larry has created a new DPX-AI online group. This DPX-AI group has been created in order to facilitate the investigation of new Artificial Intelligence processing and image creation as it relates to the digital photographer. More information can be found on the DPX tab in the above menu.
Larry Vogel has continued to evolve as a creative artist. He has created several bodies of work, some traditional in concept and technique, while others are very experimental and abstract in technique and vision. Because of his evolving approach, neither he, nor his works can be successfully categorized or pigeonholed, which Vogel finds somewhat refreshing and liberating. Vogel recalls a statement by another diverse artist, one in which he declares, “My diversity may be my claim to my obscurity!” Larry says, sometimes he feels that way too.
Vogel continued his artistic evolution as he entered into the digital age many years ago. And currently explorations have found Vogel wandering into the new Artificial Intelligence world. Although many of his contemporaries have questioned and held off making use of AI, Larry has embraced the new technology and formed new works in collaboration with AI. New collaboritive projects have already been been created, fusing AI created images with his own digital camera files and photo-compositing techniques in Photoshop.
Vogel has over 35 years experience teaching workshops, beginning many years ago with his own darkroom series of workshops and now with a full list of digital processing workshops and location workshops. Check out the list of current workshops being offered on the Workshops tab in the above menu.Vogel continues to offer his expertise in the critique process and has been sought out as a judge and instructor for many camera clubs and county fair organizers.