Calendar

Join us for our First Wednesday Monthly Meeting presented by Craig Strong from Lensbaby.

This meeting will be held via Microsoft Teams. Members will be sent login information via email. If you’d like to attend as a guest, please email us at info@darkroomers.com so we can add you to the guest list.

With stories from your photographic journey and the significant milestones that have defined your creative vision, Craig will lead us in exploring ways to expand our vision of the world in ways that are consistent with your journey, ways that bring you closer to who you are and what you see.

Please prepare for our discussion by considering the following questions:

1. What’s your first cherished memory?
   • Do you see it:
     • From your eyes?
     • From someone else’s perspective?
     • With a wide lens/telephoto lens?
     • Crystal clear/hazy?
     • What is the quantity and quality of the light?
2. How has your way of seeing this cherished memory affected your vision of the world around you?
   • What might you do to portray the world in ways more consistent with this early vision?
3. How has your photographic vision of the world grown in ways that have surprised or delighted you?
   • Is there an event that led to you seeing a subject matter in a new, unique way?
   • What/how do you see now that you didn’t see before that event occurred?
   • What would you like to portray in your photographs that you see but have a hard time capturing?

About Craig Strong

Craig Strong’s career as a photographer grew from a staff photographer position at his college newspaper to photographing for The Oregonian, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Sports Illustrated and numerous other magazines and newspapers. Having learned on-the-job as a photojournalist, especially from staff photographers Greg Anderson, Karen Tapia and Keith Durflinger, during an internship at the Whittier Daily News, Strong learned to recognize moments and apply his creative vision to capturing those moments in increasingly unique ways. Over nearly two decades as a professional photographer, the lack of ideal, affordable tools to realize Strong’s creative vision turned his efforts more and more toward making the photographic tools he needed, eventually leading him to cofound Lensbaby, Inc. in 2003. For nearly 20 years, he’s served as the Chief Creative Officer at Lensbaby, heading up their R&D efforts to bring unique creative effects lenses and filters to visual artists all over the world.

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 for November will be Will Gibson.

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.

MEMBER NOTICE: Since we will not be holding an image critique in December, you can submit up to six (6) images for the November 2023 critique.

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 Will

I turned my hobby into a vocation in 1979. By the next year, I had opened my own commercial studio in San Marcos. When I closed the studio 20 years later, I had a full wet lab for film and printing and became a one-stop shop for digital pre-press, including drum scanning. After a three-year sojourn to Ohio, where I traveled the art fair circuit, I returned to California. I became a photo teacher at Palomar College and UCSD Extension and continued my personal work in a wide range of techniques and styles. I currently show my work in Studio 3, 317 E Grand Ave in Escondido, and teach tintype workshops at the Photographer’s Eye across the street.

Darkroomers members may drop off their print entries in preparation for the January 13, 2024 Year End Competition.

Entry Categories

• Architecture & Cityscapes
• Animals and Insects
• People
• Landscapes and Waterscapes
• Other
• Still Life

Members may submit up to 10 images each. Entries must be submitted online at submissions.darkroomers.com between December 1-31, 2023, before print delivery on January 3, 2024.

The 2023 Year End Competition judges will be Larry McDaniel, Judith Preston, and Oliver Asis.