The first thing Sam Abell entreats his workshop students to do is imagine their photographs without a primary subject. “I cover up the subject with my hand and ask, is there still a photograph under here?” says the celebrated National Geographic photographer, who has lived just west of Charlottesville for going on fifty years. “The answer, almost always, is no.” That can be a tough lesson for eager photographers, but it’s easier to swallow coming from such a calm and sympathetic teacher. It makes a difference, too, that Abell has always practiced what he … Continue reading For Albemarle’s Sam Abell, Photographs Come from Within. By Russell Hart→
At three, Brooke Major picked up a paint brush and rode her first horse. Her path was set. “My grandfather had riding stables and I fell in love with horses as a young child in Clayton, a small town in the North Georgia mountains,” Major remembers. She started riding frequently, and by six, she had her first pony and began jumping lessons in Buckhead, a suburb of Atlanta. “As for painting, the passion started at the age of three when I drew on absolutely everything I could find, most of the time … Continue reading The Sculpted Paintings of Brooke Major→
This mother and son have more than most in common; Leah Oates and son Maximilien St-Jacques share a passion for photography.Oates’s grandfather was an amateur photographer who passed on his interest to her. When she began art school she was a painter and printmaker, but says she always referenced photography in both and eventually realized she was a photographer. She studied at Mass Art, Rhode Island School of Design and at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oates also studied in Rome on a year abroad program at RISD and at … Continue reading The Photography of Leah Oates and Max St-Jacques→
I have always been interested in visual art. In fact, years ago my wife, Linda, and I owned a small art gallery. But I have long been a writer, and I wondered if personally entering the visual arts might hamper the writing. Wasn’t writing enough for one person? Then my attitude changed. For one thing, my wife and I bought an old farmhouse in the Texas countryside, between Houston and Austin. This transformed our lives. I had always lived in a city, so … Continue reading The Photographs of Christopher Woods→
When tracked down, Aaron Farrington was on a camping trip in the woods of Grayson Highlands State Park. We met soon afterwards in his basement studio in the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville. A photographer of many talents and technologies, his subjects include newts, frogs and mushrooms, smoke stacks spewing pollution, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dave Matthews music videos, documentaries, and vintage wet plate portraits. Farrington remembers growing up in Harrisonburg, Va. where, at fifteen, he was given his mother’s Pentax 35 mm camera and he started taking pictures. Around the same time, … Continue reading Photographer Aaron Farrington→
As I Found It: My Mother’s House Sometimes I envy my baby-boomer friends for having lost their parents quickly. Mine left this life piecemeal. It took my father two painful years to die from cancer, and soon after, without her husband to moor her, my mother began her decade-long descent into dementia. When she could no longer live alone it fell to me to empty her house, a rambling, creaky Victorian on Boston’s South Shore that she had inhabited for over forty years. Paperwork piled high on her desk told a sad tale. … Continue reading Photographer Russell Hart→
Margo Hamilton and Ron Evans share a studio and a passion for photography. At their studio at the McGuffey Arts Center in Charlottesville, Va. a variety of some twenty-five cameras are strung decoratively on one wall. Their work includes fine photography as well as portraits of family, children and silhouettes. The two photographers met in 2009, Evans having moved to Charlottesville from Dallas, Texas where he had lived for thirty-five years. Hamilton had been living in Charlottesville for close to a decade. A native of Little Rock, Ark., Evans remembers playing with his … Continue reading The Photography of Margo Hamilton and Ron Evans→
There is beauty (and aspects of interest) in most everyday things. I am not a technically gifted photographer, however, I like to tease out unusual visual presentations of mundane things. Through my photography I seek to elevate the easily overlooked to pleasing “eye candy.” I don’t rely on Photo Shop or other sexy photographic software. I do employ extreme camera settings for color saturation on my old Nikons. I often also use creative framing, severe shooting angles, and I enjoy a frenetic obsession with my over/under button (exposure compensation). I happily emulate the pioneer … Continue reading New Photography by William C. Crawford→
“I didn’t initially like abstract art,” admits artist Kathleen Markowitz, her vibrant paintings offering bursts of primary colors, suffused surfaces that suggest rather than depict nature and its mysterious forces. She remembers her early exposure to art and how, over time, her taste would evolve. “My aunt was a fine arts painter in New York City. As a young girl we spent much time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Velazquez was our favorite artist. One day we stumbled on a contemporary artists exhibit. I saw my first Pollock. It emotionally took me somewhere fresh … Continue reading The Art of Kathleen Markowitz→
I began photographing at sixteen when I got my first paycheck from the local movie theater to purchase a 35 mm film camera, a Canon EOS Rebel G. The camera then never left my side the rest of high school. I was compelled to document everything from nature to the people in my life. As life progressed, photography may have taken a backseat, but I always found my way back to it. My book, Abstracted Distractions: teetering between here and gone showcases images from the past twenty years. My work explores images of nature … Continue reading The Photography of Kimberly Flynn→
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