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 mophotoartist@gmail.com 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).