Author Archives: GAR

Photo of the Week – Martin Seelig

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You may remember the photo by Martin Seelig posted in the fall of a couple of musicians at the the Ola Belle Reed festival. Here he takes a different film camera into the Grayson Highlands area of Virginia, just north of Elk Garden on the Appalachian Trail. “It was so cold I was surprised that the camera did not freeze up.”

The shot certainly captures the cold and stark nature of the landscape on that particular day. The winter clouds were enhanced by placing an orange filter onto the lens which accentuated and separated the whispy white cloud formations from the dark blue sky. One can feel the bite of the cold and hear the wind whistling. The scraggly, almost menacing tree adds to the the foreboding. The scene bares little resemblance to that viewed by most summer vistors to the Mt. Rogers area. Could the composition have been strengthened by taking a few steps to the right, placing the stone formation in the foreground more in the left third? Or does it serve as a strong anchor point as is? It’s a question worth considering.

Martin Seelig - Mt Rogers on a bitterly cold day

Martin Seelig - Mt Rogers on a bitterly cold day

A Minolta XE-7 was the camera used, loaded with Legacy Pro 100 B&W film. The lens chosen was a Rokkor-X SI 28mm. F/16 was the aperture selected with a shutter speed of 1/60 sec. Martin processes the film himself and then scans the negative to produce a digital image. One can only admire the final result.

Photo of the Week – Rosie Kosinski

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Rosie Kosinski is perhaps our youngest member, a student at Davidson College. But like so many other members, she is not an Ashe County native and has traveled the world extensively. The photo below is our first submitted from Israel, more specifically the Palestinian section in the city of Jerusalem.

Rosie Kosinski - Street Vendor in Old Jerusalem

Rosie Kosinski - Street Vendor in Old Jerusalem

It’s easy to see what first attracted her eye-the street vendor with his table of precariously stacked sesame rolls. The first instinct must have been to hone in on this central subject, taking up the entire frame. But creativity seldom follows the obvious route. Instead she increased the field of view to include the passageway to the left and to add the Palestinian students with their backpacks. It’s this decision that made an interesting scene much more so, elevating the final result into a shot that grabs one’s attention.

This photo is also one that could be analyzed from many different angles-the row of darker stones leading to the vendor, the diagonal lighter stones pointing to the passageway, the textured wall behind the vendor, the posters dividing the picture into thirds, the glance back by one of the students or the averted eyes of the vendor. However it’s all of these working together that tell the story and make the image a pleasure to view.