Eli Vega, a highly published award-winning photographer and author, will give a presentation entitled “Abstracts, Close-Ups, & Special Effects,” at the Flatirons Photo Club monthly meeting at 7 p.m. this Thursday, June 11.
He has just finished writing his second photography book, “Right Brain Photography (Be an Artist First).”
Vega teaches photography at Arapahoe
Community College, the Arvada Center for the Arts, and Boulder Digital Arts. He also teaches three-day workshops in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Vega was born in a railroad boxcar, spent most of his formative years in west Texas, majored in art for three years, and moved to Colorado 11 years ago from Dallas.
His former life was in the Learning and Development field, where he was certified as a workshop facilitator. Those credentials, coupled with his extensive photography teaching, provides students with a down-to-earth, laid back, learning experience – with a touch of home-spun humor.
Samples of Eli’s artistic photography are at http://www.elivega.net.

Kevin Moloney will be the featured speaker and competition judge for the May 14 meeting of the Flatirons Photography Club.
Kevin is a Denver-based freelance photojournalist, media researcher and consultant who for more than 19 years has been a regular contributor to the New York Times covering the Rocky Mountain region. His images have appeared on the Times front page more than 45 times, and on section fronts hundreds more. He has photographed nearly 900 stories for the U.S. newspaper of record. Kevin’s work has also appeared in U.S. News & World Report, Fortune, Life, Time, Stern, The Chicago Tribune, The Independent, USA Today, Elle, Marie Claire, Business Week, the Christian Science Monitor, and National Geographic publications. He was one of two journalists selected as inaugural recipients of the Ford Environmental Journalism Fellowship. For more than 18 years Kevin has been an instructor of photojournalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. Kevin also has extensive international journalism training experience having taught photojournalism workshops in Argentina, Chile, the Falkland Islands and most recently in Myanmar. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado’s ATLAS Institute.

Julie Cardinal, a photographer and owner of the DARKROOM gallery, 515 Main St., Longmont, will be the featured speaker and competition judge for the Flatirons Photo Club monthly meeting on Thursday, April 9.
As a photographer, her specialties include black and white photography, fine art photography and hand-coloring of photographs.
Julie has a degree in photography from the Art Institute of Denver and grew up working in a darkroom and on photo shoots with her father. After operating her own studio for several years, Julie opened up the DARKROOM gallery last fall. The gallery also offers photography courses and workshops.

Entry Deadline for Solo Show at DARKROOM is April 15: The deadline for submitting entries for a solo show at the DARKROOM, 515 Main St., Longmont, is April 15. The theme of the competition is “The Interpretive Landscape.” First place in the competition has a monetary award of $300 plus a solo show at the gallery; the second-place award is $200; the third-place award is $100.
More information is available at http://thedarkroomlongmont.com.

Maureen Ruddy Burkhart, an internationally acclaimed documentary photographer, will be the featured speaker at the Flatirons Photo Club meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at Har HaShem synagogue, 3950 West Baseline Road, Boulder.
Burkhart’s recent work has been with Power of Hope Kibera, a non-profit organization in the Nairobi slum of Kibera, Kenya. The resulting photographic series is called Kibera: a Slice of Heaven (http://maureenruddyburkhart.com/kibera/). Prints are available at Hamburg Kennedy Photo- graphs in New York.
Her work has been in exhibits internationally and is in collections in Beijing, the Asia Society Museum in New York and MIT’s Islamic Architecture Library.
An award-winning artist for 35 years, Burkhart received her BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has worked as a portrait and commercial/
stock photographer, filmmaker, videographer and a conceptual fine artist.
“Often, especially with my landscape work, I embrace what I refer to as the ‘intimate landscape.’ I’m interested in the worldly as well as the ‘spirit’ landscape,” she says on her website (http://maureenruddyburkhart.com).
Burkhart, who lives in Longmont, has worked in a variety of photographic formats, including the iPhone. Her iPhone Hipstamatic series, Capricho Espańol (Whimsical Spain), can be viewed at http://hipstography.com/combos/combo-307-maureen-ruddy-burkhart.html.
Burkhart also offers iPhonography tours of Spain and iPhone photography courses in Longmont. Her next iPhone class is from 9:30 a.m. on two Saturdays, Feb. 28 and March 7, at the DARKROOM Gallery, 515 Main St., Longmont. Email her at [email protected] to register.

The topic for the monthly competition is Mannequins.

Max Seigal, a nature photographer based in Boulder, will be the featured speaker/competition judge at the monthly Flatiron Photo Club meeting from 7-9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12, at Har HaShem Synagogue, 3950 West Baseline Road.
Seigal works on conservation biology jobs around the world and takes his camera wherever he goes.
“With degrees in biology and environmental science, I’ve spent the last four years travelling the world working on a number of conservation ecology projects promoting sustainability,” Seigal writes on his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MaxSeigalPhotography. “Fortunately for me, this work often takes me to some of the most beautiful and remote locations imaginable, providing an excellent opportunity for me to pursue my passion in nature photography.”
Seigal prints on a variety of media, including aluminum. Part of his presentation will include information about his metal prints.
Seigal has won numerous awards, including a National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest award and several National Geographic Photo of the Day contests, the Shoot The Land International Photography  contest, and he won fourteen awards in the 2013 International Photography Awards (IPA) contest.
“I’ve had some of the best times of my life with my camera by my side, whether it be studying marine mammals off the coast of Alaska, tracking rhinos in the Okavango Delta of Botswana, or developing a more eco-friendly lobster farming mechanism in South East Asia. While these destinations truly are a dream come true for any wildlife photographer, I consider myself especially privileged to work on conservation efforts and contribute to research projects that aim to preserve some of our planets great remaining wilderness areas.”
More information about Seigal and galleries of his works is at http://www.maxwilderness.com.

For me, the best thing about photography is being out taking photographs. You are immediately surrounded by a pulsing, 360-degree-multi-sensory environment. The art of photography is reducing this mind’s- eye sensory experience into an aesthetically pleasing, two-dimensional image by blending technology with deliberate, intentional, and personal artistic seeing. The beauty and interest of a scene is what first pulls the photographer in, but eventually the image comes somewhere from within the artist—quite literally from the inside out as a kind of self-portraiture. This subtle, and at times, unconscious process, transcends the photographer’s personal style and becomes the first level of “meaning” the photograph may have.
In this presentation, we will consider the personal and artistic side of the photographic process by visualizing the “many images” that precede releasing the shutter. Why do we release the shutter when we do?
Lastly, the next best thing to taking photographs is to talk about them. Those who are willing will have an opportunity to project their images and say a few words about each. This should be an interesting evening and I invite you to join the discussion!
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I have taught university-level ancient Greek and Roman history for twenty-plus years. But I also take photographs. My company, Wild Basin Photography and Gallery, is located in the North Boulder Art District. My portfolio is filled with images of Boulder, Colorado, and the Rocky Mountain West, but also images from Rome, Florence and Northern New Mexico (Santa Fe, Abiquiu, and Ghost Ranch—-Georgia O’Keefe’s landscape).

Announcing the end-of-the-year member competition featuring a three judge panel. The following artists will be participating in this year’s event: Dan Baumbach, Glenn Randall, Kari Treadwell. Please join us for this annual celebration.

James Frank will talk about The Art of Photography – Learning to See. He will discuss his journey about learning to see as a photographer and visual artist, including watersheds in understanding the process and what makes photography unique as an art form.

James Frank is an interpreter of nature and a creator of simple and dynamic images. His photographs display a thoughtful understanding of the nuances of light and atmosphere and their effect upon tone, color and the expression of a subject. Practicing keen observation of our natural world, he combines an extraordinary eye for design with patience and determination when making photographs. For more than 35 years, Frank has lived near Rocky Mountain National Park, photographing the unique beauty of this wild place in all its moods and seasons.

Frank’s photographs have been published world-wide in numerous books and magazines. His commercial credits include such clients as DuPont, L.L. Bean, and American Express. Nature and landscape photographs of his work are displayed for sale at his gallery, Aspen and Evergreen, in Estes Park, Colorado. He and his wife, Tamara, are the gallery owners. Earthwood Gallery on Pearl Street Mall in Boulder also displays his fine art prints. Frank’s publishing company, Our Natural Heritage Publishing, now publishes his books and annual scenic calendar of Rocky Mountain National Park, released each spring.

Five books about Colorado places have been published featuring the photographs of James Frank. Magic in the Mountains: Estes Park, Colorado, was published by Our Natural Heritage Publishing and is a regional best-seller. Three previous titles – James Frank’s Colorado, A Portrait of Rocky Mountain National Park, and A Portrait of Pikes Peak Country, quickly became Colorado best-sellers upon their releases.

Frank’s calendar, books and fine art prints are available on-line at JamesFrank.com and in many bookstores along Colorado’s Front Range and Estes Park.

For the last twenty-plus years or so, I’ve taught ancient Greek and Roman history at a university in Denver. From that long perspective, there’s not much new under the sun. But I also take photographs—-and I’m as passionate about those as I am the ancient Romans. My company, Wild Basin Photography and Gallery, is located in the North Boulder Art District. My portfolio is filled with images of Boulder, Colorado, and the Rocky Mountain West. But it also includes images from Rome, Florence and Northern New Mexico (Santa Fe, Abiquiu, and Ghost Ranch—-Georgia O’Keefe’s landscape).
For me, the best thing about photography is being out taking photographs. You are immediately surrounded by a pulsing, 360-degree-multi-sensory environment. The art of photography is reducing this mind’s- eye sensory experience into an aesthetically pleasing, two-dimensional image by blending technology with deliberate, intentional, and personal artistic seeing.
So on many levels, the process of making photographs is more complicated than it appears. The beauty and/or interest of a scene pulls the photographer in; but memorable photographs come from within the photographer—quite literally from the inside out as a kind of self-portraiture. This transcends the personal style a photographer may have and becomes the first level of “meaning” a photograph may have.
In this presentation, we will look at a series of images and raise some of the many issues related to this artistic and personal side of the photographic process.
Lastly, the next best thing to taking photographs is to talk about them. This should be an interesting evening and I invite you to join the discussion!