NOPA member Beede wins top prize of PDN outdoors contest

NOPA member Danell Beede, whose "in flight" was shown in the recent Members Exhibition at the Photo Alliance gallery, has been named the grand prize winner of the Great Outdoors Photography Competition.

The competition was presented by the magazine PDN: Photo District News.

Beede's "in flight" appears twice in the magazine's August issue, on newsstands now, one on the title page of a Great Outdoors winners gallery feature section, and again inside the section. The photo is also featured in the gallery and title graphic of a winners gallery at the contest website.

The winning photo appeared in NOPA's first annual Members Only exhibit from June 9 to July 22, at the organization's Lower Garden District gallery.

More of Beede's work is featured at the photographer's website. A reaction to winning the contest is, meanwhile, the subject of a post in the site blog. 

Image: Beede's "in flight."

Morris' 'Yazoo Revisited' set for preview at NOPA meeting

A rough cut of NOPA member David Rae Morris' "Yazoo Revisited," a history of school desegregation and civil rights in Yazoo City, Miss, will be shown at the Alliance's regular members meeting this Wednesday, July 25.

Morris' Yazoo City project was partially funded by a Mississippi Humanities Council grant, applied for via the Photo Alliance.

The setting of "Yazoo Revisited," is the hometown of Morris' father, the late author and onetime Harper's Magazine editor Willie Morris. The elder Morris wrote extensively about Yazoo City in works including his memoir "North Toward Home." Another of his books, 1972's "Yazoo: Integration in a Deep Southern Town," concerned the desegregation of the town's schools.



It was not his father's writing per se that sparked the son's project, however, but former Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour's news-making comments in 2010 about the town's Civil Rights Era history. More specifically, Barbour told the conservative Weekly Standard magazine that he did remember the era as being so bad for race relations.

The NOPA meeting will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Alliance gallery, located 1111 St. Mary Street in New Orleans.

Cathedral/L'entrepôt seek submissions for Artisan Series

New Orleans' L'entrepôt and Cathedral Creative Studios are seeking submissions from photographers in connection with the Crescent City segment of Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, a national visual arts competition.

The deadline for submissions is Friday, Aug. 24. Entry is free of charge. Artists are only asked to remember that winning submissions will represent the the city in the final, national competition.

Contests are being held in major cities nationwide as part of the series, which is being sponsored by the Bombay Sapphire gin brand and the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, a project of hip-hop music and fashion mogul Russell Simmons and his brother, abstract expressionist painter Danny Simmons.





A select number of artists will be chosen to show their work at a host gallery from each participating city. The host in New Orleans is L'entrepôt and Cathedral Creative Studios, located at 527 Julia Street in the city's Warehouse District.

A preview show for local photography will be held at the gallery and studios on Saturday, Sept. 1.

Two other weekend, semi-finalist "pre shows" will be held, on Aug. 18 and Sept. 15, with the latter to feature the top picks of all artists who submit work for the New Orleans segment. Photography is eligible for showings on either date.

The final exhibit in the local Artisan Series is set for Saturday, Oct. 6, the day of the annual Art for Art's Sake gallery walks.  

One semi-finalist from each city will then be selected. The winners will be invited to compete at Art Bassel Miami, set for Dec. 6-9. Winners at that competition will, finally, have their own exhibit at the Rush Arts Gallery of New York.

For more information and to keep up with competition news, please see the Facebook pages of Cathedral and L'entrepôt.

ASMP workshop on today's photo business set for August 11

                         
An American Society for Media Photographers workshop, "Contemporary Answers for Working in the New Economy," is to be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on  Saturday, August 11 at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.

The workshop will be led by Bill Cramer, the CEO of Wonderful Machine, a marketing service for commercial photographers, and Gail Mooney, a photographer whose clients have included National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Travel & Leisure.

In the workshop, Cramer and Mooney will show how it is still possible to make a living in the photography business, as they have, despite the fact that the business has never been rougher or more competitive.

Workshop topics will include:

• Business of video (Mooney) 
• Pricing and Negotiating (Cramer) 
• Branding and Marketing (Cramer) 
• Social Media - Building your Audience, Crowd Funding and Distribution (Mooney) 

After the workshop, Mooney and Cramer will casually review as many participant portfolios as time will allow. All attendees are welcome to stay, listen and learn. Portfolios reviewed may be printed or brought on a laptop or iPad.

For more information, please see the ASMP workshop page.

Images: (From left to right), Gail Mooney and Bill Cramer.

NOLA/Santiago de Cuba project goal met; film needs remain

A follow-up to a post from mid-June: The Kickstarter fundraising drive for an international cultural exchange and multimedia project, "A Cultural Odyssey: from New Orleans to Santiago de Cuba,"was a success.

Bluethroat Productions, which ran the pledge drive, ended its campaign with $10,645 in pledges for the project, slightly over its $10,000 goal. The group's project will focus on shared heritage and similarities of music, parade and dance traditions in the Crescent City and Santiago de Cuba. 

Organizers noted that they are grateful for all who pledged money via the Kickstarter drive, which will allow them to carry out the "Cultural Odyssey" project.

Even so, they are still seeking funding for the completion of a related documentary film, "Uprising,"  which will be the first of a planned three-part trilogy to explore the popular traditions of "Las Congas” in Santiago de Cuba, second lines in New Orleans and “Rara” in Haiti.

Some filming for "Uprising" will be done in connection with the funded project, but other work on the film will remain.

For more information on project or film needs, you may write NOPA member and Crescent City photographer Christopher Porché West or filmmaker William Sabourin O'Reilly.  

Image: From the "Cultural Odyssey" Kickstarter page.

Center for Fine Art Photography seeks entrants for 'Green'

The Center for Fine Art Photography of Fort Collins, Colo. is seeking entrants for its next juried competition, "Green." The deadline for entry is Wednesday, July 25.

The Center asks entrants to remember that the most common associations for "green" are found in the color's ties to to nature, the environment, regeneration, fertility and rebirth. "Green," the word, may also describe a person who is inexperienced or youthful, envious or environmentally conscious. 

The competition is open to amateur as well as professional photographers.
Entry fees for the first three images are $20 for Center members and $35 for non-members. All entrants must pay a $10 fee for each additional image.

Winning submissions will be exhibited at the Center's gallery from October 26 through November 24, 2012, as well as in an online gallery. Awards will include the following:

• Juror's Selection: $600
• Director's Selection: $250
• 2 liveBooks Website Awards: Valued at $399 from liveBooks.com
• 1 Blurb Book Award: Valued at $250 from blurb.com

The juror for "Green" is Corinne Tapia, the director of New York's Sous Les Etoiles gallery and a collector and consultant for two decades.

For more information, please see the Center website.

Exhibit walk-through for Varisco's "Shifting" at Ogden July 21

An exhibit walk-through with photographer Michel Varisco for "Shifting." a photographic installation focusing on the Southeast Louisiana wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico, is set for Saturday, July 21 at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.

The event will be held from 2 to 3 p.m. on Saturday. In the Ogden exhibit, which concludes on Monday, July 23, the artist explores, often through aerial views, the beauty and degradation of this environment.

Varisco also chronicles the changes to the environment of the natural and man-made variety. Her body of work invites the audience to become invested in the fate of a threatened natural resource.

Varisco is a native of New Orleans. Her photographs, assemblages and site-specific installations explore loss and regeneration. She received her MRA from Tulane University and studied in France (LaCoste School of Art) and Italy (U.G.A). She is an artist/mentor at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA).

Her works has been exhibited and published internationally and is included in public, private and corporate collections in the U.S. and abroad.

"Shifting" is sponsored in part by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the SURDNA Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Admission is free for Ogden members. General admission is $10.

NOPA President Boonchai co-curating Good Children exhibit

NOPA's president is co-curating an exhibition that opens Saturday, July 14 at the Good Children Gallery, located at 4037 St. Claude Ave. in New Orleans.

The exhibit, "Something Here from Somewhere Else," features work by NOPA members Stephen Hilger, Deborah Luster, and Maria Levitsky, as well as Eric Graham and Katherine Newbegin.

Opening: Saturday July 14, 6 - 9pm
Exhibition Dates: July 14 to August 5
Curators' Walk-through: Sunday August 5, 4pm

Something Here from Somewhere Else features work that seeks to draw forth phenomenological relationships between human interactions and its affect on the experience of space. Similarly, the work explores how the character of a place is tweaked by our interventions as well as how the memories that are held in a place can make us vulnerable to the intimacies of our inner selves

For more information, please see the Good Children website.

New Orleans Community Printshop seeks funds for expansion

The New Orleans Community Printshop is seeking at least a smidgen more help in reaching a fundraising pledge goal via the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, funding that will allow it to complete the build-out of its new location at 1200 Mazant Street.

At blog post publishing time, the volunteer-led outfit had received $7,727 in pledges of $8,000 sought, with 15 days to go before a deadline to meet that goal. If the goal is not reached, no money changes hands. Pledges made in excess of what is in effect a minimum goal, however, are still accepted.

The new facility is to feature a larger darkroom, as well as a classroom and more print areas. Funds raised will allow the organization to do necessary plumping work, complete enclosure of the darkroom and screen exposure room, complete all necessary venting, and the like.

Most of the build-out work is being done by volunteers, but money is needed for materials as well as the hiring of professionals for plumbing and electrical work.

For more information, including a list of rewards for those pledging monies, please see the Community Printshop's Kickstarter campaign page.

NOPA Programming Committee meeting set for July 18

NOPA will be holding a programming committee meeting on Wednesday, July 18, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The committee will be working out final details for 2012 events, and after that will begin brainstorming sessions for 2013 exhibitions, lectures, workshops and other events.

If you cannot make it to the meeting, but have ideas you would like to share with the group, please write NOPA programming chair David Armentor.

Book-signing event for Varisco's 'Shifting' set for July 12

New Orleans' Ogden Museum of Southern Art is to host a book-signing event featuring NOPA member Michel Varisco on Thursday, July 12, in connection with the release of her new book, "Shifting," and the museum's ongoing exhibit of the same name.

The new book includes all of the Varisco images, of the Louisiana wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico, that are featured in the exhibit. The Ogden show will run through Monday, July 23.

The museum will host a gallery walk of the exhibit on Saturday, July 21, beginning at 2 p.m.

The July 12 book-signing is being held in connection with Ogden After Hours, a regular music performance series. The event, which features the North Mississippi indie pop duo Blackbird Hour, is set for 6 to 8 p.m. this Thursday.

Varisco noted that the "Shifting" book was a labor of love, one supported by many people in the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana region. It includes essays by Anne Gisleson (the co-editor of "How to Rebuild a City") and curator Bradley Sumrall. The contributions from others do not stop there, however.

Other contributors include:

• NOPA President Seth Boonchai, co-designer of the book's layout.
• Rachel Breunlin, who handled editing duties, and and Courtney Olds, who served as copy editor.
• Dan Etheridge of Tulane University and Dr. Doug Meffert of the National Audubon Society's Louisiana organization, who acted as scientific advisors for the project.

Those unable to attend the Ogden After Hours event may buy the book through museum's bookstore, or buy the book directly from Varisco. You can find more information about the artist, including contact information, at her website.

F-Stop Magazine seeking submissions for upcoming issues

F-Stop Magazine, an online photography journal that features contemporary photography from established and emerging photographers worldwide, is seeking submissions for two upcoming issues. These include the following issues, with the two having individually unique themes:

Issue 54, August/September 2012
Latin American issue
Deadline: Sunday, July 15
Only photos taken in Latin America may be submitted for this issue, but otherwise the theme is open. F-Stop is collaborating here with fototazo.com, a website dedicated to raising funds to benefit young Colombian photographers from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Selected photographs will be exhibited at the F-Stop and fototazo websites

Issue 55: October/November 2012 
"Helping" issue 
Deadline: Saturday, Sept. 15
Photographs submitted for this issue must involve a theme of "helping." According to editors, this could mean photographs of helping or photographs taken for a helpful purpose. However, the theme is open to interpretation.

For submission guidelines, you may visit the F-Stop website.

Image: F-Stop banner image by Ajay Malghan 

Deadline for Art of Photography show extended to July 16

The Art of Photography Show, an international exhibit of photographic art held annually in San Diego, Calif., has extended the deadline for entry for its 8th annual show to Monday, July 16. The deadline was originally June 30.

The judge for this year's exhibit is Julian Cox, the curator of photography and chief curator at the de Young Museum of San Francisco.

The exhibit will run this year from September 29 through November 11 at the San Diego Art Institute.

The entry fee is $25 for three images, and $10 for each additional image. Amateur as well as professional photographers are eligible for entry. More than $10,000 will be awarded to winning artists, including $2,000 for a first prize winner.

For more information, or submission details, you may visit the event's website and Facebook page.

Image: "denwa," by Sean Lee of San Bruno, Calif., from the 2011 (7th Annual) Annual Art of Photography show.

LA State Museum photographs focus of WVUE-Fox8 feature

New Orleans Local News, Weather, Sports, Investigations   The photography collection of the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans was the focus of a "Heart of Louisiana" series feature that aired last week on the news programs of WVUE-Fox8, the Crescent City's Fox Network affiliate. The video is shown above.

The television news segment features NOPA members Mark J. Sindler and Tony Lewis, who serve as the museum's chief photographer and curator of visual arts, respectively. Sindler, it must be noted, is a former NOPA president, while Lewis served as curator for the 2010 exhibit of the CURRENTS series, an annual members showcase.

The WVUE segment highlights the museum's collection of some 200,000 photographs. Works shown include daguerreotypes from the mid-19th Century, along with a photogenic drawing produced, possibly as early as 1935, by a young assistant of naturalist and painter John James Audubon.

The segment also focuses on the museum's ongoing documenting of Louisiana life and culture, through a look at Sindler's cultural documentary photo work.

A multi-media news feature, with the video segment on the museum's collection and accompanying text, is available at the WVUE site.