Bay Area Photo Club

 Our program for this Thursday night April 17, 2014 will feature a slide presentation of images by Lou Vest, a Ship Pilot for the Houston Ship Channel.

Lou Vest would certainly have you think he was just an unassuming ship pilot, nothing special.  Delving a little deeper, I found him to be much more than that.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.  He served in other capacities during his career, before becoming a ship pilot in 1986.

"Lou started carrying a camera to work in 2005 to document the experience of working on the Houston Ship Channel.  His goal was to bring attention to what was a virtually unknown port, in the region and throughout the nation".  He began using his camera to show others how vibrant and complex the port of Houston really was.  I obtained the preceding information from Houston Arts Alliance website, where Lou allowed them to post his photo essay on the port, located here.

Lou had a story written about him in the Houston Press Blog in October 2013 here.  In 2011, one of Lou's images was named Best Photo of the Year at the Houston Web Awards.  He participated in a 2010 Fotofest exhibit at City Hall and had a show at the Arts Alliance during Fotofest 2012.  He has recently been learning to print his own work.  We will ask him to share whatever insights he has learned about that process.

His website can be found here http://www.louvest.com/.  Do not miss this presentation.  I truly believe what he shares with us on Thursday, as photographers, will leave a lasting impression on all of us.

The meeting will start with club provided snacks and socializing at 7:00pm.  The presentation will start at 7:30pm.  The meeting is held at Butler Longhorn Museum in League City.  Visitors are welcome!

Our annual Photographer of the Year recognition dinner was held on January 16^th.   It was our usual pot luck dinner with a spectacular assortment of side dishes and desserts brought in by our members to accompany Texas’ statutory requirement of a Pappa’s barbecue main course.  Everyone in attendance gained 2 pounds.  If you noticed me carrying a plateful of desserts home after the meeting go ahead and assume I was taking it to someone else.

In order to boost the post-meal energy levels, we held our annual annoying quiz.  This year, despite many notices that there would be a general knowledge quiz, members were still unprepared for my quiz on ‘generals’.  Nevertheless, grading on the curve, we had 2 winners who walked away with small prizes. 

The main event was the presentation of the 2013 Photographer of the Year Award to Nuwan Samaranayake, who edged out a very competitive group of photographers this year.  During the year, Nuwan brought in many stunning images that really need to be seen.  Take a few minutes to browse Nuwan’s gallery of gold award images to understand why he received this honor for 2013.  Lewis Hall was 3 percent behind Nuwan and also has an incredible gallery of photos.

Finally, we conducted about 2 minutes of business in announcing the new slate of officers and committee chairpersons.  Barry Armer will be taking on the president’s position for the next 2 years.  Prior to his inauguration I explained all the cool things about this job.  Now that he is in charge, I will tell him the rest.   Good luck Barry. 

Bob Dempsey

Immediate Past President 

There was some discussion at our December 5 meeting about the upcoming assignment “complementary colors” for January. Steve Schuenke mentioned a web-based tool called Color Scheme Designer, an interactive color wheel. Below is the link to the web site along with a tutorial on complementary colors where it is used on Phlearn.
Enjoy.

http://www.colorschemedesigner.com/

http://phlearn.com/enhance-complimentary-colors-in-photoshop