Oct. 21, 2019 — Meeting notes

Thirteen lucky photographers attended the Light Painting workshop at the Dubuque Camera Club meeting on Monday, October 21, 2019. We were a few days past fine weather, so most of the meeting was spent inside. Participating club members brought tripods and gear.

Club president Ron Tigges, with assistance from Willie and Jennifer, arranged a goodie table with a variety of light painting gadgets. Ron started the meeting with a slideshow presentation of light painting techniques and images. He learned about some of these techniques during an N4C event.

The most elaborate tool that he showed us was a pixel stick. “The pixel stick is kind of like voodoo,” said Ron. It contains color-changing LEDs with built-in flash card. You can preload small images that display as you walk. The images are invisible to the eye but can be captured with a camera.

Later, when people set up their cameras for long exposure, the first pixel stick surprise was a Blufftops & Visions logo. The flames were really popular too. There were also some spooky images on the pixel stick. They were photographed in the dark woods by a few brave souls who ventured outside toward the end of the meeting. See the Pixel Stick website for more about what it can do.

Believe it or not, the type of cheap lighting that is sold for rave parties is ideal for light painting. Ron tied a bunch of fingerlights on a string and spun them around for a homemade globe spinner. The secret is to mark the spot with a piece of tape to stand on. This ensures that your globe (or light orb) has a center. Here’s a picture that he took for practice:

Light globe photo by Ronald Tigges.

“Be creative. Try all the different stuff,” said Ron at the meeting. Free-hand options may be made from simple items you have at home, such as a flashlight or headlamp. Put clear plastic tape over a white flashlight and color the tape with a marker for a “gel” effect. Some flashlights can be set to display a strobe. Try a small strobe to paint twinkling stars behind a model. Remember, if you don’t want your model to show in the final image, they should be dressed in black or dark colors.

Another funky option shared at the meeting was an LED color change hoola hoop. It’s possible to get a “beam me up, Scottie” effect when the hoop is raised from the floor to above the model’s head. A couple of seconds of flashlight used as a spotlight completes the effect. Willie Tigges, dressed in black for the light painting demonstration, was the hoola hoop model.

Light painting photo by Lori Burrows. Model: Willie Tigges.

At the meeting, people were setting their cameras at about 20 seconds. To do light painting, place your camera on a tripod and set it for long exposure. Pre-focus on a spot, then set it on manual so the focus doesn’t drift. To get a neat effect, you’ll need to experiment with the exposure triangle (ISO, aperture, and shutter speed).

“It’s all about the movement,” said Ron. At the meeting, the lights were moved, and the cameras were still. You could also theoretically move the camera. [Here’s a tutorial about kinetic light painting from Digital Photography School.]

Lori Burrows joined Willie in adding light trails to the scenes. With the addition of light sabers (yes, Star Wars toys!), the club succeeded in taking some adventuresomely weird pictures. Henry Matthiessen III volunteered to serve as model.

“It kind of hearkens back to original photography,” said Ron. “When you go back to the darkroom, it’s a surprise. Then you build more light in that image.” The resulting images are spellbinding!

Light painting photo by Lori Burrows of LoriB Photography. Club member Henry Matthiessen III was the model. Taken at the October 21 meeting of the Dubuque Camera Club.

Reflections, a photography exhibit by the Dubuque Camera Club, is on display at the Dubuque Museum of Art through November 10, 2019.

Last chance to see the Reflections exhibit: Nov. 10

We are proud of the terrific photography by the twenty Dubuque Camera Club members who participated in this year’s Reflections exhibit at the Dubuque Museum of Art. We have heard positive feedback from several visitors to the show. The museum has even asked us back for 2020!

Have you taken your friends and family to see the Reflections exhibit yet? It contains 25 photos on metal, and is located upstairs in the balcony gallery. You can see it any time the art museum is open. See the DuMA website for hours.

If evenings work best for you, here’s an option: Fall Into Art, the downtown Dubuque tour of art galleries on Friday, Nov. 1 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Your last chance to see Reflections will be Sunday, Nov. 10, the final day of the exhibit. ** Club members, your Reflections prints will be returned to you at the club’s holiday potluck party on Monday, December 9th. **


Other happenings…

Digital Dubuque photos of Voices murals. The photos of club president, Ronald Tigges, are being used in a display at Clarke College’s Quigley gallery (in the Atrium building). This photo and video exhibit is about the Voices Production murals of downtown Dubuque. The Clarke gallery is open Monday-Friday: noon to 5 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday: 1-5 p.m. Stop by and take a look before the exhibit closes on November 6, 2019. Free.

Broad Ideas, the annual woman-oriented art show at the Galena Center for the Arts, is accepting submissions from now through Feb. 2, 2020. You can submit up to three items. The exhibit starts in mid-February. We’ve had a couple of club members participate in the past. This is an amateur show, but it is in a wonderful community venue, and they also have several events planned. Learn more on the Broad Ideas website.

Wisconsin nature photos wanted. Have you ever taken a field trip with the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin? They just opened their annual photo contest. Prizes are a nice set of binoculars or a t-shirt. Entries must have been taken on one of their field trips. Deadline is Sunday, Nov. 17. Find more info in their newsletter. NRFW nature field trips range across the state of Wisconsin, with some as close as LaCrosse or Madison, so definitely keep this opportunity on your radar for 2020. NRFW is also seeking Wisconsin nature photos from pro shooters:

Are you a professional photographer?
Consider supporting our work by sharing the rights to some of your photos that showcase Wisconsin’s lands, waters, or wildlife for us to use in our print or digital marketing. Please contact jaime.kenowski@WisConservation.org if interested.

Photo Pro in Cedar Rapids has some interesting workshops and events coming up. On Friday and Saturday, November 1 & 2, they will hold their annual Cash for Cameras event, featuring used gear. Tamron and Sony reps will lead workshops. Here’s a link to the Photo Pro events listings. You can also follow their Facebook page.

Our friend Mark Dierker, from Bear Dancer Studios, will be operating a pop-up shop on the Central Avenue Curve (2230 Central) during the months of November and December 2019. Mark creates fine art photography, including outstanding images of storms, nudes, and ruins. To learn more, visit his website or follow Bear Dancer Studios on Facebook.

Fall Into Art, the free downtown Dubuque tour of art galleries, will be held on Friday, November 1, 2019 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. The Telegraph Herald ran a nice overview of this event in their Oct. 24 issue.

The Dubuque Museum of Art (701 Locust St.) is one location on the Fall Into Art tour. It’s your chance to see the Reflections exhibit by the Dubuque Camera Club, located in the balcony gallery!


Next club meeting

The next Dubuque Camera Club meeting will be held on Monday, November 4 at 6:30 p.m. N4C submissions are due before the meeting. Submitting to N4C competition is one of the perks of membership. Club members, watch your email for a reminder.


October 7, 2019 — Meeting notes

The Dubuque Camera Club meeting on October 7, 2019 was attended by 20 people. We welcomed one visitor, a guest of club member Becky Mather.

By the way, Becky has two really awesome prints in the Reflections exhibit:

Photography by the Dubuque Camera Club is on display at the Dubuque Museum of Art through November 10, 2019.

REFLECTIONS. This is the club’s 7th consecutive exhibit, and we just heard the news that we have been invited back next year! We are getting positive reviews for the show, and the brochures are going so fast they have become valuable souvenirs! You can see all 25 images from the Dubuque Camera Club in the upstairs balcony anytime the Dubuque Museum of Art is open, from now until November 10, 2019. Good work, photographers!

At tonight’s meeting Jennifer and Ron gave us a post-convention debriefing on Finding Your Light. Jennifer is now an N4C board member. The 2019 N4C convention was hosted by the Des Moines Camera Club and was held in Des Moines in September.

Everybody recognizes the Dubuque Camera Club at N4C meetings because we did such an awesome job hosting the Blufftops & Vision conventions in 2018. Yay, us!!! Several photos taken during Blufftops were on display in this year’s print competition.

Highlights from this year’s Finding Your Light convention included a macro workshop from the keynote photographer, Don Komarechka, and a buffalo-oriented photo excursion to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge.

Photo by N4C board member Jennifer Tigges

The N4C board meetings were as contentious as usual, said our club reps. The next clash of grey-haired, camera-carrying titans will take place at Wesley Woods, near Pella. Any club member can attend the N4C mini-con on April 24-26, 2020. Registration info will be sent out by the N4C beforehand. The location is in a wooded area with on-location dorms so attending this mini-con is not too expensive.

Two new clubs just joined the N4C, bringing the membership up to 39(?). A new photojournalism story category — with five images and up to 30 words per image — will be judged at the 2020 spring mini-con. Entries should follow the journalism guidelines in terms of using minimal editing. A video contest will also be premiered at the mini-con. Details have not been posted yet, but we’ll pass them on when we know something.

Here are the future locations for upcoming N4C annual conventions:

  • 2020 – Sioux City, Iowa (take Hwy 20 and go straight west for five hours). Hosted by the Sioux City Camera Club. Here’s their Facebook page.
    → According to the Sioux City club’s N4C rep, Carl Hardy, the Sioux Falls, South Dakota camera club will be co-hosting, and will judge the end-of-the-season competition. But the convention will actually be held in Iowa, so stop the car before you cross the bridge to Nebraska! (Geez, I better look at a map.)
    Sioux City (see map) has a population of around 80,000 people and is located on the Missouri River. It is historically famous because the explorers Lewis and Clark stopped there. Here are some of the area’s photo-worthy attractions.
  • 2021 – Duluth, Minnesota (about six hours north of here). Duluth is located on Lake Superior. A noteworthy site to photograph is the Aerial Lift Bridge.
  • 2022 Wichita, Kansas (about 9 hours on the road if you plan to go).
  • 2023 – DUBUQUE, Iowa!!! (tentative) Like, seriously!?!? We suspect Ron volunteered us again because he thinks Jenn will potentially be recovered from Blufftops by then. So get ready!

Dubuquers rule: End-of-the-Season Winners

Our club earned three end-of-the-year awards at the 2019 N4C convention:

  • David Smethers, Honorable Mention, Digital Journalism, “Rock climber scales sheer cliff face to summit rim of Grand Canyon”
  • Jose Garcia, Second Place, Digital Black and White, “Smoke”
  • Dubuque Camera Club, Honorable Mention, Digital Newsletter, written by Pamela Brandt

This summer at the 2019 N4C mini-con, our club also took home a panoramic print award:

  • Ronald Tigges, 3rd Place, Panorama Print, “Christmas in July”

Congratulations, photographers!

Member news…

Henry Matthiessen III was in attendance at tonight’s club meeting. He just completed his Thought from the Road journey to the American southwest. He juggled several Nikon cameras and camped on the mesa, among other fun times. The trip resulted in over 3000 still photos.

In addition, Dean Wellman took 2 terabytes of video, and is crafting a documentary about the Thoughts from the Road experience. Here’s the project’s playlist on Youtube. Possibly we will see the duo at the next Julien FilmFest…? Remember, you can visit Henry in his new gallery on the Central Ave. curve.

Novice club member Sam Fenstermacher bravely took off his cowboy hat to stampede the room toward his recent “Transitions” project on Instagram. He documented his move from Texas to the tri-states with 100 days of smartphone photography. Here is a link.

Club member Jose Garcia continues to build world fame with his digital talents. More of his photos were featured on the Canon USA Instagram page. Rumor is, he will be leading another workshop for PhotoPro in Cedar Rapids. Details were not yet available.

Another new club member, Lorna Costello, will have artwork on display in the Creative Adventure Lab gallery during the Fall Into Art gallery tour on November 1st from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Remember, the Dubuque Museum of Art is also a stop on Fall Into Art, so be sure to make time to see the club’s Reflections exhibit!

Photography and videography that was originally created by Ron and Jennifer Tigges (aka Digital Dubuque) is currently featured at the Quigley Gallery in the atrium building at Clarke. Ron took thousands of photos of the Voices Productions’ downtown mural project, and a number of them have been printed for this exhibit.

At the next meeting…

The next meeting of the Dubuque Camera Club will be on Monday, October 21, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. We are planning to do a light painting activity. Depending on the weather, we will also go outside for a night photoshoot. Bring tripod and gear.

TIPS: You may want to practice long exposure photography before the meeting. If you are willing to hold the lights, be sure to wear dark clothing. Dress warmly for going outside and wear your hiking shoes. You may want to bring a flashlight, and possibly binoculars (for looking at the moon/stars). More details will be emailed to club members. 

See the links below for a couple of light painting tutorials:

Sept. 16, 2019 — Meeting notes

The Dubuque Camera Club meeting on Monday, September 16, 2019 was attended by 23 people. Many of the people present were world travelers, including the youngest photographer in the group: Sara, age 6. She has traveled on at least two continents as an assistant to a professional photographer (Dad). She was a very good girl at the meeting. Here she is, looking patient and pretty…

The meeting’s agenda was to judge 108 pictures in the Digital Nature category of the monthly N4C competition. Because it takes a while to consider all these images, and we wanted to get done before the cows came home, we needed to get started right away.

For that reason, preliminary discussion was limited to a quick reminder about the upcoming Reflections exhibition. Remember, our Reflections photography exhibit opens at the Dubuque Museum of Art on Sept. 21, with an opening reception on Friday, Sept. 27th from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Be there!

Becoming a new club member

Club treasurer John Leicht arrived fashionably late, to the great relief of a half dozen people eagerly willing to pay their dues for the 2019/20 season. Paying the club dues of only $20 per year qualifies you to participate in club exhibits and activities, sell gear on our Facebook group, and submit to the N4C competition, such as we judged tonight.

While the judges were being assembled (i.e., were lassoed cowboy style and yanked up front yelling their strong objections with spurs dug into the carpet), there was an extended discussion in the back row about how long, exactly, it takes to get a member number once a new member pays his or her dues for the first time.

Apparently, this is how it works: John gives the completed membership form to Cara, who passes that paper to some mysterious N4C liaison, who passes it on to a couple more volunteer bureaucrats, and then it slowly circles back around to us, like a squadron of migrating pelicans coasting gracefully over a vintage carshow while the gearheads scramble to protect their chrome.

Judging Digital Nature

There were indeed several good pictures of pelicans in this assortment of nature photos, both the brown pelican and the American White Pelican that we see around the Mississippi River. Not to mention photos of other birds, mammals, landscapes, bees and flowers, a couple of adorable foxes, and one beady-eyed mink that just about made Cara fall off her chair because for a moment she wondered if the critter who was after her chickens yesterday got in the building somehow.

No, the photos we saw tonight were not just from our club. When we judge, we are actually looking at submissions from about three dozen N4C affiliated clubs. This season (which runs from Sept. 2019 through June 2020), our club is scheduled to judge a total of three times. We’ll judge Digital Pictorial in February and Digital Travel next May. Here’s a map of where the N4C clubs are located:

Serving as judges for Digital Nature tonight were John Leicht, Robert Felderman, and Greg Nauman. Facilitators were club president Ronald Tigges, and N4C reps Cara Pusateri and Ken Kiss.

All of the evening’s judging was informed by a wealth of photography knowledge and careful evaluation. Insightful comments accompanied each photo, such as Greg’s remark: “I just can’t figure out what the h*ll it is.”

At least one audience member who appeared to be obliviously scrolling on a smartphone, was actually downloading the new N4C competition rules multiple times in order to search for guidance. Any kind of guidance.

For one thing, nature photos should not show the “hand of man.” Our gut instinct also tells us that people who edit nature photos in post-processing should not leave behind clumsy and obvious debris from deleted objects. Adjustments to nature photos should look natural.

As Ron said: “It looks like people are jacking with their nature. Don’t do that!”

If a photo is obviously tinkered with, yet entered in a category that forbids such tinkering, it should probably have not been submitted by that club. But our club is a bunch of soft-hearted softies. So our judges used a 2-2-2 scoring for questionable photos. (P.S. If you are reading this and you belong to another N4C club, and your club’s photos came back with all twos, you might want to read the rules.)

Digital Nature Rules


Nature Photography is the recording of our natural world by some photographic means. Included are all branches of nature except Archeology and Anthropology.
1. No photograph is worth distress or injury to any wild creature.
2. Nature photographs may be either black & white or color.
3. The hand of man shall not be present in any nature entry except where wild animals have adapted to the built environment (e.g., fence posts and other man-made objects freely adapted for use by wild creatures).
4. Banding or tagging on nature subjects is acceptable. Photographs at bird feeders are not acceptable if any part of a man-made feeder is shown in the photograph.
5. Photographs taken in zoos, animal farms, or game farms are acceptable if the hand of man is not visible.
6. Cultivated plants, domestic animals, and pets are not acceptable.
7. Adjustments must look natural. The use of HDR, exposure blending, focus stacking, stitching, and related techniques that combine more than one image is acceptable, provided the resulting image is natural in appearance.
— Source: N4C contest rules

For club members that want to do well in future competition, here are the qualities that catch the eye of our judges:

  • Subject is in sharp focus
  • Colors are well-saturated
  • Good lighting
  • Cropped perfectly (for a 16:9 screen)
  • Good use of any negative space
  • Interesting use of texture
  • Depth of field was considered
  • Doesn’t look fake. (Manipulation is not obvious).
  • Tells an appealing story that makes the viewer wonder.
Visit the Winners Gallery on the N4C website to see the Nature winners from Sept 2019.

Think you’ve got what it takes? Current Dubuque Camera Club members (you must have a member number) are encouraged to submit to the next N4C competition. Each club member may send in up to one image per category. Submissions are due by or before our next meeting on Monday, October 7th. Specific instructions will be in the email that goes out to club members.

Sept. 3, 2019 — Meeting notes

The first Dubuque Camera Club meeting of the 2019/2020 season was attended by 21 people. The meeting was held on a Tuesday due to the Labor Day holiday.

Two brave guests who were not intimidated last season, Debbie and Lorna, came back to see us again, and even, rumor has it, paid their dues. I predict that the next step on their life journey will be figuring out how to resize images to 1920 pixels and 750KB. Sam, another fearless individual, came all the way from Texas to attend our meeting. That is quite a commute!

Ellie, one of our most seasoned club members, regaled us with the tale of how she was issued her member number (#11) during horse-and-buggy days. In those pioneering days, the club used slides for competition. Even harder to fathom, the PSA had not yet become too high-brow for ordinary mortals. Today in the N4C, some competition photos that make the Best of the Best at the end of the year are sent onward to PSA competition.

At tonight’s meeting, club president Ron Tigges gave a refresher tutorial on the intricacies of club business. We meet twice a month (typically on Monday evenings) in a season that runs from September to May. Annual dues of only $20 qualify you to participate in club activities and exhibits, as well as submit to N4C competition. Club treasurer John Leicht is in charge of collecting dues. If you have not yet paid your current dues, bring them to the next meeting!

REFLECTIONS. The club’s Reflections exhibit will open on Sept. 21 at the Dubuque Museum of Art. This is our 7th consecutive annual photography exhibition at DuMA. This year the club was able to offer a financial subsidy for prints, thanks to proceeds from the 2018 Blufftops & Visions convention.

Twenty club members have a photo in the show, which will be located upstairs in the balcony gallery. An opening reception for Reflections will be held on Friday, September 27 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. (Admission charged; exhibiting artists get in free). The exhibit will be on display through Nov. 10, 2019.

N4C COMPETITION. A few fearless club members sent in N4C competition submissions before the meeting, so we looked at those. A few minor changes in rules and category descriptions are now in effect. [Click here for the latest N4C contest rules].

Remember, competition submissions are always due before the first meeting of each month. They are posted to the club’s online gallery. The club has a voting process for winnowing down entries (vote for five per category, using your member number in the comments).

When a category is not yet full (i.e. less than 8 images have been submitted by the meeting — or 16 when we get double submissions because we judged), it’s first-come-first-served. N4C reps Cara Pusateri and Ken Kiss make the final call about which submissions go in. Details about submitting to N4C competition are in the club emails to that go out to members.

MORE N4C STUFF. Finding Your Light is the theme for this year’s N4C convention in Des Moines on Sept. 19-22, 2019. Our club is sending a couple of delegates, to rock the digital boat and keep the fogies alert. Odds are, we will probably hear a report about all the juicy N4C news and convention presenters from Ron and Jennifer as part of our October 7 club meeting.

MISC CLUB GOSSIP. General Bob was in attendance, betwixt his world travels and renaissance man art experiments. He led the distracting topic of the evening, which revolved around feeding alka-seltzer to seagulls (supposedly, they explode). We plan to fact-check this urban myth on the local stray cats [only partially joking]. Check back here for gory updates.

Speaking of myths and memories, our adventuresome friends, Henry Matthiessen and Dean Wellman, are on the cusp of their photo-journey to the American southwest. Thoughts from the Road will happen from Sept. 16 through Oct. 1, 2019. See their GoFundMe page for details or find Thoughts from the Road on Facebook. They may not realize it yet, but they have taken a blood oath to present their work at an upcoming Dubuque Camera Club meeting. Details TBA.

Another dream too good to be true was the oft-repeated news story that we Iowans would be able to see and photograph the northern lights (aka the Aurora Borealis) on Labor Day. Club member Andreas Exner drove in search of this fantasy, making it all the way to Pilot Knob, Iowa. However, it still wasn’t far enough from the light pollution to get a good picture of the northern lights. He took this one instead.

Finally, the promised night photo shoot is tentatively re-scheduled for an upcoming meeting (Oct. 21?). The current iteration of this idea is to shoot the MOS chapel. Yes, you read that right. We are going to walk through a dark forest with our tripods a few days before Halloween. Hopefully nobody meets a haunted seagull on the trail. Stay tuned…

June 3, 2019 — Meeting notes

Thanks for making our final meeting of the season a success!

The Dubuque Camera Club meeting on June 3, 2019 was our annual potluck picnic, the final meeting of the 2018-2019 season. We had an excellent turnout, with thirty-four people attending. Thanks to everyone who brought food, assisted at the grill, or helped to setup/takedown this enjoyable event.

“It’s great to see this many people here. The food was amazing,” said club president Ron Tigges.

The club provided burgers and brats, at a cost that tallied to only $2.19 per person. Jennifer did a great job of organizing, and Ken helped set up the room. Attendees brought a variety of salads, side dishes, beverages, and desserts. We had to scramble for plates and forks (not to mention gnat spray for those at the grill), but everything came together.

After dinner, treasurer John Leicht gave an overview of the club’s finances. We have a healthy balance in both checking and savings. The club’s yearly expenses include facility rental, N4C membership dues, Smugmug subscription, web domain, Eagle watch expense, brochure printing, any presenter stipends, and the food/refreshments provided at various meetings or events. At this point the club is in a good position to subsidize the DuMA exhibit and also purchase light painting equipment.

The Dubuque Camera Club will hold a summer photo shoot to feature Light Painting. This event will happen in July or August. Details TBD.

Summer photoshoot: Light painting

In July or August we will hold a summer photoshoot to feature light painting. Ron is in charge of purchasing equipment and organizing the event. We may reach out to other regional photographers and ask them to join us. We will first gather at a local venue, and then head out after dark to explore. Club members, watch your email for details.

Light painting is a long-exposure night photography technique. To participate, you will need a tripod and a camera that can do low light photography. (You need to be able to set your camera to manual or bulb mode.) ** Do you need to figure out this technique? Below are some helpful links:


Reflections submission deadline extended to June 17th

The club reviewed all the Reflections submissions received thus far. A few were not yet in the online gallery. We hope to have at least one image selected from each photographer that wishes to participate. Ron touched base with the art museum curator, and he read her email response to the initial submissions.

Cost. The club will pay half the cost of one print per member. Everybody who has submitted needs to think about whether they are willing to have more than one image in the show, because you will be responsible for the additional cost.

Exhibit brochure. The club also hopes to create a brochure to accompany the exhibit, with short profiles of each participating photographer. Everyone will be asked for biographical info about 50 words in length.

Deadline extended. The Reflections submission deadline has been extended by two weeks to Monday, June 17th (the Monday after Father’s Day). See this page for the complete Reflections Guidelines.

(Re-)Election of officers

A motion was made to retain all current club officers in their positions for the 2019/2020 season. The seconds, thirds, and ayes went around the room so fast that my head was spinning. The general consensus of the group is that the current officers are doing a fine job.

“I think we have a really good club. We have the camaraderie,” said Ron. He pointed out that the club’s Smugmug gallery serves as an archive of growth. Due to this synergy, our club has good representation in the N4C winners’ galleries.

N4C photography competition returns

N4C reps Cara and Ken shared comments from judging clubs as we reviewed the returns from the May 2019 competition. Congratulations to the following talented Dubuque Camera Club photographers!

  • Bob Felderman, Two merit awards
  • Kevin McTague, Honorable mention and Merit award
  • Lori Burrows, Merit award
  • Cara Pusateri, Merit award
  • Becky Mather, Honorable mention and Merit award
  • Ken Kiss, Honorable mention

For future competitions, remember that Black and White photos need to be high contrast to do well. It’s possible to submit a panel of up to three related photos in Journalism. And no “hand of man” should be visible in nature photos. Pictorial is a catch-all category, for subjects that don’t fit elsewhere.

Some of the canned comments were every bit as helpful as usual. This one I could recite in my sleep: “Technically sound but lacking interest to the majority of viewers.” Remember, some of the feedback we hear on N4C competition photos is a default selection from the spreadsheet that is used during judging. We did well as a club to hold a critique workshop last month. More constructive feedback is always better.

Is it Art or not?

“Art is subjective and different for everyone,” said someone in the room, as we were looking through images. Yes, that is somewhat true, but not completely.

General Bob, who is currently attending the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, spoke up and mentioned the English art critic Clive Bell (1881-1964). Bell, who was part of the Bloomsbury Group (he married Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa), wrote a lot about what makes art art — or not. That field is called aesthetics. It is related to the Philosophy of Art.

Think about the last time you saw an incredible image, one so good that it made you catch your breath in awe. In your gut, you KNEW it was artistic. That photo had SOMEthing to make you react in appreciation. Composition, color, subject matter, post-processing… everything lined up perfectly.

One example, for those who attended Blufftops & Visions, was the astounding keynote presentation by our international speaker, Iván Ferrero. His final slideshow was awesome. Every picture was eye candy, really and truly art. And I’m pretty confident most of the other people in the room felt the same way — this perception wasn’t just my own subjective taste. So it must be possible to develop the skill or talent to take consistently wonderful photos.

Yet not everybody who picks up a camera can easily make a decent photo. Certainly, not every photo gets the same score or feedback on N4C judging nights. The rest of us have to learn and stumble. We learn the rules of composition and how to use our camera, and also how to take advice from more experienced photographers.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up what little I know about the subjectivity of art. You may want to take a look at this interesting article from PetaPixel about the Aesthetics of Photography. And if you want to read Clive Bell, here’s a book.

Art, like green eggs and ham, is subjective…. Or is it?

Upcoming club events

Visit the events page for more upcoming area photography events.

Next official Dubuque Camera Club meeting: TUESDAY, September 3rd, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. (Note this meeting is on a Tuesday due to the holiday). All tri-state area photographers are welcome to attend. Location: E.B. Lyons Interpretive Center, Mines of Spain. This meeting will kick off the 2019/2020 season. We’ll review changes and updates to N4C rules and competition guidelines. Monthly competition submissions are due before the meeting. No digital nature.

N4C convention in Des Moines, Sept. 19-21, 2019 — Finding Your Light, hosted by the Des Moines Camera club. Speakers, field trips, and workshops. No commercial vendors this year. Early bird registration deadline is August 11 at a cost of $185, not including lodging.

Reflections exhibit opens. Saturday, September 21, 2019. Photography by members of the Dubuque Camera Club at the Dubuque Museum of Art. The exhibit is scheduled to run through November 10th. More info about an opening reception/gallery talk will be announced closer to the date.

Flash Happening. Sometime this fall (possibly the first weekend in October???) — A temporary art installation in the former radio station on 8th and Bluff. This is a partnership between the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society and the Dubuque Museum of Art. The club will organize some sort of photography-related activity or exhibit. Details TBD.

Member events

Photo Pro workshops. Club member Jose Garcia, now a Canon ambassador, is leading two workshops in Cedar Rapids in June. Learn more at the store’s events page.

Dubuque Camera Club member Laura Schuster will exhibit her work at the Corkless art show in Galena, Illinois, on June 22, 2019.
Location of the new Stoned Art Studio on Central Avenue in Dubuque.

Stoned Art: Thoughts from the Road. Club member Henry Matthiessen III has partnered with local musician/videographer Dean Wellman to adventure in the American southwest. They will soon be launching a GoFundMe campaign. To learn more, visit the Thoughts from the Road page on Facebook.

Henry has moved his Stoned Art Gallery to the Central Avenue “curve” with an official opening date of August 1st.

NOTE: If you have any news or information, or corrections for the website, please contact Pamela.