Moab Photography Symposium

The road to where and who we are often takes many highways. After high school, I joined the Navy to "see the world". I spent the next six years in the submarine service where I rarely saw anything but the underwater green of the North Atlantic Ocean. After the Navy, I went on to complete a medical degree with a residency in Internal Medicine. I started my present journey into landscape photography about 10 years ago while providing care for individuals with HIV and AIDS. Photography developed initially as a means of getting outdoors but soon became a passion. Slowly, I found myself drawn to its artistic lure and creative passion. After a rewarding 24 years in my Los Angeles medical practice, I answered the call of the Southwest with a move to Tucson, Arizona where my wife and I make our home.

My wife, Margaret, is fulfilling her dream of a career in Library Science and will focus on children's literature. I have made the transition to a full time career in landscape photography and fine art print sales. Life has been a fulfilling journey in this process. The lesson for us has been to follow our hearts and dreams. Landscape photography allows me to capture my dream of travel and exploration. My images are meant to inspire, in you, an increased awareness for the beauty that exists in our remaining wilderness and national parks. These images are both original and expressive renditions of the natural landscapes and convey my visualization of their beauty at the time of capture. I take pleasure in the capture process using both film and digital photography equipment.

I believe it is important to understand the fundamentals of film photography to allow for a complete understanding of the photographic process. I encourage you to gain this basic expertise to allow for a complete foundation during the transition to a digital environment. It is quite magical to undergo the production process of a photograph in Photoshop or Lightroom and see a flat file come to life in print. It is only in this final print that one can truly appreciate the exquisite beauty of these locations. I provide fine art printing services, photography, Photoshop and digital work flow instruction.

www.vicbeer.com

Chris Conrad

Buying his first camera to document international travels in 2000, Chris Conrad got swept up in the wave of digital technology and has been struggling to stay afloat ever since. Today, Chris combines both film and digital technologies to produce photographic work from simple, Polaroid prints to elaborate time-lapse movies created from digital still images. Time (as captured through shutter speed) has become Chris’ favorite subject as of late. His work “Ethereal Days” is primarily created at night, allowing the shutter to remain open as long as 12 hours. As the earth spins, holding the tripod steady ‘neath the desert sky, reflections and impressions of earth, moon, and stars are rendered onto the film. Though Chris has taught Photoshop workshops in the past, he is looking forward to moving into more creative realms with this year’s workshops.

www.petroscans.com

Bill Crnkovich

Bill was born in Wisconsin and has lived in Connecticut and Virginia before moving to Utah in 1994. He holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering. It was 30 years ago when a friend ignited his passion for photography. After being involved in camera clubs out East, he was disappointed with the lack of clubs in the Salt Lake City area. He founded the Wasatch Camera Club and, more recently, the Focal Point Photographers club of which he is currently the president.

Bill is in awe of the grandeur of the West. He spends many long weekends enjoying the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains, the Red Rock country of Southern Utah, and the majesty of the Tetons. For the past 12 years he has been leading people on trips from Arizona to Montana and Colorado to California and Washington. The Pentax 67II has been his camera of choice for landscapes since 1999.

Bill’s pictures are published in numerous publications. His Albion Basin wildflower image graces the cover of the 2008 Utah Office of Tourism’s scenic calendar. He is prominently featured in the Utah Film Commission’s recently released book Utah Hues. Bill enjoys helping other photographers recognize their potential through collaboration and mentoring.

www.bestwestphoto.com

Jeff Foott

Jeff grew up in California, studying biology and doing research at Moss Landing Marine Lab, studying marine mammals. He left science for a higher platform to speak from, to make a plea for sanity in the environment- through films, books, and magazine articles.

He has produced and shot over forty films for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Nova, BBC etc. His film on Patagonia for the Living Edens Series was a finalist for an Emmy in cinematography. He has done assignment work for National Geographic Magazine, World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation and many others. Jeff writes a photo/ adventure blog for Travel Channel. He is a former professional advisor to Outdoor Photographer Magazine. Recently he sold his 200,000 image stock file to Discovery Channel.

Still doing what he loves, he shoots 4x5 fine art landscapes, as well as digital projects. He leads trips for Van Os- Photo safaris, recently to the Antarctic, Rwanda for Mountain Gorillas, and Kenya for the Wildebeest migration. He divides his “home” time between Moab and Jackson Hole, where he works as a climbing guide for Exum Mt. Guides.

www.jfoottphotography.com

Adriel Heisey

Adriel Heisey is an aerial photographer and professional pilot based in western Colorado. Having drawn inspiration from his years flying over the extraordinary landscape of the American Southwest as an executive pilot for the Navajo Nation government, he now devotes himself to artistic interpretation of natural and cultural landscapes through aerial photography. He flies an airplane he built himself expressly for photography. It is slow, open, and simple, allowing him to be both pilot and photographer.

Heisey’s aerials are published in magazines such as Arizona Highways, Nature Conservancy, and National Geographic, where he’s published a cover story on the Four Corners, a feature portfolio on the Sonoran Desert, and contributed to feature portfolios on Hawaii and the Colorado Plateau. He is the author of three books featuring his aerial photography of the Southwest: Under the Sun: A Sonoran Desert Odyssey (2000, Rio Nuevo Press), In the Fifth World: Portrait of the Navajo Nation (with Kenji Kawano, 2001, Rio Nuevo Press), and From Above: Images of a Storied Land (2004, The Albuquerque Museum). His fine art prints are exhibited in galleries and museums, and are in many corporate and private collections. He lives in Montrose with his wife Holly and their four cats.

www.adrielheisey.com

David Hiser

David Hiser is a photojournalist and photo educator. Photography assignments for the National Geographic Society have produced twenty stories in National Geographic Magazine as well as contributions to numerous National Geographic books and films. His assignments have ranged widely: Aztecs, Death Valley, Coyotes, Early Man, Hudson Bay, Pompeii, Polynesian Sailing Canoes, Sri Lanka, Tasmania and Tarahumara Indians among others.

This work and assignments and other publications including Newsweek, Smithsonian and Geo have resulted in a large stock photo archive currently represented by Getty Images. These photographs find a new life being used in advertising, corporate media and college textbooks.

With a strong interest in teaching, Hiser has led imaging workshops at The Maine Photo Workshops, Anderson Ranch Art Center and many other institutions. He is currently a Research Associate at Digital Arts Aspen where he has designed and implemented digital imaging workshops for a wide variety of clients, He lives with his wife, the artist Annaday Hiser, in the mountains near Snowmass, Colorado. Living not far from Moab, he has photographed widely in Canyonlands for his own interest and on assignment.

www.photoaspen.com

Bruce Hucko

Bruce Hucko is a freelance photographer, author, art educator and radio producer whose primary work focuses on the land and people’s relationship to it. Hucko works in a broad range of styles that range from large-format fine art B&W and prints and 35mm color images of area landscapes to portraits of area residents. He specializes in photographing Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) Homesites and people in their natural environment. Hucko has completed documentary work among the Seri Indians of Mexico, Navajo rug weavers, and ranch families across the West. He's also photographed and produced interpretive slide shows for Arches NP, Organ Pipe Cactus NM, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance and the award-winning, 8-projector, 40-minute multi-media show the Canyon's Edge.

Hucko has photographed extensively among the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo people and recently completed work on a documentary project among the Navajo he first worked and lived with 20+ years ago. He has photographed 9 books on Southwest Indian Arts and Crafts for KC Publications. His work among the Ancestral Puebloan people in large format B&W and Color has been exhibited widely. Hucko was the photographer for the book Cowboys and Cave Dwellers and the author and contributing photographer of Art on the Rocks by Sierra Press. Seventeen books feature Hucko’s work including Dead Horse Point (KC Publications) and Time Among the Ancients: Rock Art & Ruins of the Colorado Plateau (Impact Photographics), both released in Spring 2007.

He is currently working on a personal project called WaterSong. His collaboration with poet David Lee was selected as the inaugural exhibit for Salt Lake City’s new mayor. Aside from photography Hucko enjoys hiking, whitewater rafting and a good red wine.

www.brucehuckophoto.com

Brian Parkin

Brian Parkin is a photographer and gallerist based in Moab, Utah. Born in Bolton, England he graduated B.Sc. Chemistry from the University of Reading, taught high school science in England and Belgium, and worked as a book editor at Oxford University Press. After moving to California in 1991 he studied art and photography at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco and graduated with an MFA in 1995. He subsequently taught technical lighting and portraiture at the Academy. Between 1995 and 2001 he worked as a camera assistant and location scout with commercial shooters in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Initially interested in making images of western landscape as a record of place, his studio experience encouraged him to make more experimental works using a variety of techniques. Selected images can be viewed at www.brianparkin.com.

Brian photographs fine art for reference and reproduction in his Spanish Valley studio using both traditional and digital capture methods. In October 2006 he founded Moab Art Works (www.moabartworks.com) to better service the needs of local and visiting visual artists, and as a place to see original artworks in a gallery setting. Brian has exhibited in galleries and other venues and has work displayed at Moab City Hall. He has promoted more than fifteen exhibitions of photography, painting, and sculpture at his Main Street gallery and co-promoted moAbAbstracts in 2006 and 2007. Brian's interests include instant-print portraiture, non-traditional landscapes, and lensless photography. In 2007 he became a US citizen.

www.moabartworks.com

ViviAnn Rose

A native of Moab, photographer ViviAnn Rose is a master of hand-coloring, enhancing black-and-white images with the use of paints and pencils. Rose applies her talent to subjects ranging from nudes to landscapes, meticulously applying oil paints and acrylics until she achieves the vision that is in her mind.

“I try to visually re-create what I felt at the time I was looking at the scene, and what I add is the magic,” she says. “Photography is a mechanical art; what you do beyond shooting the picture is personal expression. By adding oils and using watercolor pencils, you can focus more on details, accenting what you want to emphasize. Hand-coloring defines, it enlivens. It helps re-create the moment.”

These days, many photographers experience instant gratification using digital cameras and personal computers, viewing their work on site, then downloading and printing images at home almost immediately afterward. Though ViviAnn now enjoys using a digital camera she goes back to the basic for her fine art work. She rarely departs from a medium format camera, 120 B&W film, the “wet” darkroom, and traditional hand-coloring techniques that date back to the 1930s.

She has been rewarded throughout her 30+ year photographic career with awards and invitations to show in competitions coast to coast, in Canada and Europe. She was among 50 international artists invited to participate in a traveling exhibit throughout the US and Europe in the year 2000.

Rose’s art is among private, corporate and publicly owned collections in galleries and museums throughout the US and Europe. Most recently, one of her works was purchased to be added to the collection of The Museum of European Art in Clarence, NY.

Ann Torrence

My transition from a vacation traveler with a camera to a photographer on the road for thousands of miles a year began when I was recovering from a serious illness. I had plenty of time to think about what was important to me and I decided to pursue my own photographic vision.

In the last six years I have advanced my photography, partly through workshops and classes, but mostly on my own. My favorite images record snippets of conversations – between me and another person, the sunrise greeting the landscape, or a mountain goat assessing the danger of my camera. My approach is to be an informed participant, initiating the interchange but letting the conversation unfold naturally.

Themes that interest me include the interplay of the human element and landscape; transformations of culture–what we keep, lose, and change; passionate people of any stripe, and the idea of the great American west. “US. Highway 89: the Character of the American West” documents the people and places along the greatest road trip in the country.

I began using Adobe Photoshop 3.0 for websites in 1995,. My digital editing skills came together with my photography when I transitioned to a DSLR. In my Remix! Series, I explore multispectral imaging techniques, most recently incorporating infrared imagery into my images.

I blog about my photographic adventures on my website. My photographic journey so far has been extraordinarily fun, often surprising, and immensely rewarding, particularly because of the people I been privileged to meet along the way.

www.anntorrence.com

Tom Till

Tom Till has been obsessively photographing self-assignments for over thirty years. Originally inspired by the work of Eliot Porter, he’s spent much of that time creating over 70,000 4x5 transparencies. The images come from all 50 states and over 60 countries overseas. Though not abandoning the 4x5 camera, he has come to love digital photography, and now shoots both with Nikon and Canon equipment.

Till is author of over 30 books including the best-selling Utah: The Light Fantastic, and four new books appearing this year. He is one of the few landscape photographers awarded NANPA's prestigious Fellow Award. Later this year, Till's prints of UN World Heritage Sites will be exhibited in Geneva, Paris, and other European cities.

The Tom Till Gallery in Moab is celebrating its 11th season this year. Till has been inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A big fan of movies and music, when he was not in the field this year he was attending Eagles concerts, watching Lost, and hanging out with wife Marcy and dog Gizmo at their home in Moab.

www.tomtill.com

Steve Traudt

"Photographing lets me see and feel a part of the environment, whether a mountain or a tiny wildflower," says Steve Traudt. "This seeing leads to more awareness which in turn enhances the seeing even more. The process is addictive!"

In a dusty attic at the age of 10, Traudt chanced upon some old darkroom items belonging to his father. He ordered fresh paper and chemicals from the Monkey Ward catalog and a lifelong interest was born. Raised in Nebraska, Traudt moved to Grand Junction in 1987. He teaches photography at 13 Photography Gallery and conducts photo seminars around the country. His work is featured in several area galleries as well as note cards, calendars and books.

Traudt calls his photographs Synergistic Visions. He explains synergism as the cooperative interaction of several elements yielding a superior result. For Traudt, photography is synergism of such elements as the brain, emotions, vision, lenses and camera. Since photography is both art and craft, Traudt views this synergism as a marriage of left-brain and right-brain activities. "In today's world, we're in such a hurry; looking only straight ahead. I make photographs which cause the viewer to pause, even for a moment, and realize all the remarkable events in our world, awaiting discovery." Interested in a variety of subjects, his current work explores the form and texture of urban and natural landscapes. He also uses a variety of “low tech” technologies to extract the essence of a subject.

www.synvis.com

Rory Tyler

Poet, musician, hiker, and raconteur, Rory Tyler is also one of Moab's leading guides and interpreters of rock art. He not only finds new panels, but returns repeatedly to numerous sites to see for himself how they might work at the solstice and equinox as well as within the context of the surrounding landscape and attendant sites. This attention to detail over time gives Rory a unique and thoughtful basis for his interpretation. Rory works locally for Canyon Voyages Adventure Co., leading hikes. He enjoys sharing his love of the land and encourages all people to show their respect for archaeological sites they many find. He is an accomplished poet and uses the cowboy poetry genre as his form of expression. Rory will lead you on an unforgettable hike.