GUEST AND MEMBER SPEAKERS
FALL 2022 SEASON
Scroll down to view information on upcoming Speakers
September 21, 2022
NICO CARVER: Getting Started with Astrophotography for Experienced Photographers
NICO CARVER: Getting Started with Astrophotography for Experienced Photographers
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Bio
Nico Carver has always been a camera nut. After graduating from college with a degree in filmmaking, he traveled around the world and first fell in love with photographing the night sky while shooting Aurora in Iceland. He now works at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and has a YouTube channel that aims to help beginners get started with astrophotography. Website: https://nebulaphotos.com YouTube: https://youtube.com/nebulaphotos Instagram: https://instagram.com/nebulaphotosdotcom Getting Started with Astrophotography for Experienced Photographers Shooting the night sky can seem daunting even for experienced photographers. The mistake many make is thinking they immediately have to go out and buy the largest telescope they can afford. Nico Carver will lead participants through a presentation on how to use normal DSLR and mirrorless cameras and lenses to get started in astrophotography. Many projects (e.g., Milky Way, comets, northern lights) can be done with gear that participants likely already own. To go to the next level, Nico will recommend equipment to buy with a starting budget of $2000. The talk will cover:
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October 6, 2022 - Part 1 and October 19, 2022 Part 2 (1st half)
MICHELLE MACLEOD: Explore your Creativity with De-stress + Shoot
MICHELLE MACLEOD: Explore your Creativity with De-stress + Shoot
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Bio
Michelle Macleod is the Assistant Curator of McGill University’s Visual Arts Collection (VAC). Her role includes collection research, curatorial projects, and communications for a collection that consists of over 3500 artworks. Before joining the VAC team, Michelle was an editorial assistant at the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a cataloguer at Concordia’s Visual Collections Repository. Michelle is currently a PhD Candidate of the Interuniversity Doctoral Program in Art History at Concordia University. Her doctoral research examines the dissemination of early Canadian photography in nineteenth-century illustrated periodicals. She holds an MA in Photographic Preservation & Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University and a BFA in Art History from Concordia University. Website: www.mcgill.ca/vacollection Instagram: @mcgill_vac Email: vacollection@mcgill.ca Explore your Creativity with De-Stress + Shoot (October 6, 2022) De-Stress + Shoot Reveal (October 19, 2022) This two-part event is a special adaptation of the McGill Visual Arts Collection’s popular series De-Stress + Sketch, which ran from Spring 2020 to Summer 2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this online program featured an artwork from the collection every week with an open invitation to send a sketch of it back to us. The following week we shared a roundup of all the creative submissions. Over time, the series grew from a fun way to share works of art from the McGill University collection to a form of art therapy that helped us feel connected to each other. It also was a wonderful way to push artistic boundaries and encouraged many to try new themes, forms, and mediums in their own practices. Specifically designed for the members of the Montreal Camera Club, De-Stress + Shoot is an invitation for photographers and digital artists to take up an artwork as a source of inspiration. In the first presentation on October 6th, Michelle Macleod will offer tips from an art historian’s toolkit for appreciating artworks, present an overview of McGill University’s art collection, and highlight one artwork that serves as the members' creative challenge. We will meet again on October 19th to showcase the members’ submissions and discuss processes of inspiration. To have your work shown in the De-Stress + Shoot Reveal on October 19, please submit your photographs/digital art by midnight on October 16, 2022 to vacollection@mcgill.ca. |
October 19, 2022 (2nd Half)
SPOTLIGHT ON MEMBERS: Philip Goldsmith & Suzanne Pelland
SPOTLIGHT ON MEMBERS: Philip Goldsmith & Suzanne Pelland
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Introduced in 2021-2022 as An Evening with . . . to re-create the sense of community of in-person meetings, it’s now back as Spotlight on MCC Members.
Don’t miss this opportunity to watch and listen to an informal show-and-tell by talented members, in alpha order, Phillip Goldsmith and Suzanne Pelland, of some of their favourite images, with Q & A. They will give us a behind-the-curtain peek into their background, process, technique, and anything else that takes their fancy, and take all our questions in stride. |
October 26, 2022
WAYNE SIMPSON: Portraits of Resilience
WAYNE SIMPSON: Portraits of Resilience
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Bio
Wayne Simpson is an author and professional photographer based in Elora, ON. Determined to tell meaningful stories through portraiture, Wayne prides himself on being true to his subjects as he combines art and compassion together as one. Whether he is photographing a person or a place, Simpson’s ultimate goal is to create images that evoke emotion and a sense of mystery. While his niche lies in portraiture and landscape photography, his versatility as a photographer carries into his commercial work and event photography, making his style distinctive in the industry. As an educator, Simpson conducts portrait and landscape photography workshops throughout Canada. Website: https://www.waynesimpsonphotography.com Email: wayne@waynesimpsonphotography.com Interview on CBC’s The Current: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/15896693-wayne-simpson-documents-ordinary-people-extraordinary-stories-photography Portraits of Resilience Many people wear a lifetime of experiences on their face, yet who that person is and what they have experienced often remains a mystery. In this talk, the audience will encounter a collection of portraits accompanied by individual stories of inspiration, tragedy, and humanitarianism. The overall narrative is an emotional journey in which the audience will inevitably see pieces of themselves in the stories of some truly remarkable individuals. With compassion and respect, Wayne Simpson has befriended individuals and discovered some truly remarkable people with profound stories we can all learn from. Intertwined with each story is the sub-narrative of the photographer learning who he is as each connection is forged. Always compelling, and at times haunting, Simpson’s portraits keep storytelling at the forefront. The atmosphere and mood are often crafted with multiple studio lights on location. Many of Simpson’s portraits are graced with intricate details— adding additional layers of complexity to the portrait and in turn making each portrait a visual story on its own. In the first half of Wayne’s talk, he will be sharing personal experiences from his time with various subjects and drawing parallels to his own life, struggles, and personal growth. In the second half, Wayne will focus more on the technical and psychological aspects of his work. He will discuss how he finds his subjects, approaches them, and establishes a mutual trust, as well as sharing some of his lighting setups.     |
November 16, 2022
LUC PARENT : On Judging Photos
LUC PARENT : On Judging Photos
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Bio
Eighteen years ago, former Montrealer Luc Parent opted for early retirement to follow his passion for photography. Co-founder of Duobjectif.ca, photography educator, and speaker since 2014, he’s passionate about sharing what he knows and what he does. He favours landscape photography to capture nature’s beauty, street photography to meet people, and architectural photography to highlight aesthetic concepts. He uses post-processing software to bring out the best in images and to create photo composites. For him, photography is so wonderful a pursuit that he is driven to share it. On Judging Photos/Images Are you confident about which images to submit to competitions? Are you happy with the judging at club competitions? How do you feel about the marks? About the judges’ comments? This three-hour presentation will help you develop your critical sense for evaluating both your images and other people’s images. You’ll get explanations of tools and exercises for comparing and analyzing images, and tips for communicating effectively when you judge images in public. Just before the talk, you’ll get access to an evaluation grid to use for one of the evaluation exercises. The talk will cover:
Web site: Duobjectif.ca Email: info@duobjectif.ca Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FormationPhoto Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/duobjectif.ca/?hl=fr Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCimmcUw_aLq63EmVORafnTA Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucparent/     |
November 23, 2022
VALÉRIE JARDIN: Street Photography: First Steps and Beyond
VALÉRIE JARDIN: Street Photography: First Steps and Beyond
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Bio
Valérie Jardin is a French photographer, currently residing in the United States. She is self-taught and worked for several years as a commercial photographer. Today, Valérie is known internationally through her workshops. When she is not teaching others the art of visual storytelling, Valérie is a prolific author and public speaker. She is also an official X-Photographer for Fujifilm USA. She lives and breathes in pixels. Valérie Jardin Photographer - Educator - Author - Public Speaker Website: www.valeriejardin.com Instagram: @valeriejardin Street Photography: First Steps and Beyond In this presentation, Valérie will give an overview of the different ways to approach street photography. She will go over the ethical aspects of this popular genre of photography, the dos and don’ts and how to get over the fear of photographing strangers in the streets. Through examples from her body of work, Valérie will show different techniques to tell a story in a frame and ways to make stronger street photographs. Part of this presentation delves into preserving the anonymity of the subject as well. Participants will leave this presentation with a renewed vision of street photography.     |
December 7, 2022
JOHN KOSMOPOULOS: Nth Creativity: Towards a "Finer" Art Photography
JOHN KOSMOPOULOS: Nth Creativity: Towards a "Finer" Art Photography
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John Kosmopoulos |
BIO:
Canadian art photographer John Kosmopoulos has received multiple international distinctions for his breadth of work. His images have been featured in galleries throughout the world, including the Louvre in Paris, on billboards, and in several national and international publications. His photography is also featured in a cinematic essay entitled "Greece Year Zero" (2016). John embodies an “Eclectic Aesthetic Fine Art” (EAFA) philosophy of photography where his specialization is in a generalist approach. His intent is to capture the complexity of beauty across multiple subjects and translate them back to the viewer with an aesthetic that is thematic, symbolic, and cinematic. Home is Toronto, where he balances his passion for the photographic arts and writing with his love of the psychological sciences as an educator. John also conducts 1 to 1 and group “finer art” workshops in Canada and around the world guiding emerging artists to evolve expressively. TALK: Nth Creativity: Towards a "Finer" Art Photography What is the future of your photography? As an emerging or professional photographer, you want to evolve and create your own path to a meaningful process in your photography. You have many imaginative ideas but you are often stuck on how to express them in a comprehensive and coherent concept that is both daring and different from what everyone consumes as "art" in galleries, social media, AI-platforms, etc. This interactive talk will explore the idea of self-inspiration and "nth creativity", in contrast to the conventional idea of specializing in a specific genre or technique. This kind of approach is closer to an eclectic or generalist process; it allows for conceptual networks in art photography and makes it possible for the photographer to maintain a unique signature. I will explore several of my series as a means of highlighting the merits of an "eclectic aesthetic" to help you explore and express your own counter-intuitive curiosities. Website: www.silverzenphotography.com Instagram: @johnkosmopoulos John Kosmopoulos’ article on minimalism, "The Art of Oramaku", an intro to some of the ideas in his talk: https://silverzenphotography.com/the-art-of-oramaku/      |
