NOVEMBER SPEAKER: Ed Knepley

Our Speaker for November is Ed Knepley. He will speak on "Through the Viewfinder to theDigital Darkroom". Ed, a retired engineer, took up photography as a hobby in 2002. Since then he has become a highly successful nature photographer and competitor, with numerous awards from his home organization, NVPS. He progressed from two juried images at Meadowlark in 2004, his first exhibit, to seven in 2005 and then a sponsor’s choice in 2006. His photos are on display in the newly opened exhibit at the National Park Service’s Byrd Visitor Center on Skyline Drive, and at the Joseph Miller Center for the Photographic Arts. Ed works exclusively in digital photography, with a Gitzo 2220 as a best friend. One of his average of 75 shots daily is posted to his website www.knepley.net .

Here are Ed’s thoughts on his topic… Ansel Adams once said “The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.” He also said “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.” For digital photographers “The RAW image file is comparable to the composer's score and the print (or digital projection) to its performance”. Dodging & burning (and similar wet darkroom actions) are no less needed in digital photography than they were with film. The presentation is based on lots of visual examples of all facets of digital editing. The emphasis is on making your image appear as it did in the viewfinder and not on creating enhanced digital images (although by popular request, the steps to create out-of-frame images as well as infrared, montages, and multiple exposures also will be demonstrated).

There’s something for all – digital and film shooters; novice and advanced. Please note that this will be a tour of the digital darkroom and not a how-to session. About a dozen topics will be covered in the one hour presentation - each topic is easily an hour session by itself if how-to was the objective.