RAMONA, CA — Patch reader and local photographer Catherine Werth captured this photo of a house finch on her property in Ramona.
“House finch on a distant relative?” she joked.
Thanks for sharing!
If you have an awesome picture of nature, breathtaking scenery, kids caught being kids, a pet doing something funny or something unusual you happen to catch with your camera, we’d love to feature it on Patch.
We’re looking for high-resolution, horizontal images that reflect the beauty that is San Diego County, and that show off your unique talents.
Send your photos to [email protected]. Be sure to include photo credit information, when and where the shot was taken, and any other details about what was going on.
But at 19, making mug shots for ID cards for months on end, the poet manqué was still unfulfilled. “I must have taken pictures of maybe 100,000 baffled faces before it ever occurred to me that I was becoming a photographer,” he would later reflect. These quotidian images were pared down to portraiture’s essentials out of necessity: heads and shoulders presented against a seamless white background with one direct source of light. Despite the work’s repetitive nature, its influence can be felt in Avedon’s distinctive later style, in his painstaking scrutiny of faces and expressions.
His portraits are intimate close-ups that reveal every blemish and nuance of physiognomy with an uncompromising, even brutal, honesty. The frontality of his composition and his very lack of “style” set him apart from the majority of his contemporaries, with the exception of his friend Diane Arbus. Between them, they discarded the conventions of the first 100-odd years of portrait photography and, by reducing it to its core, redefined what the essence of portraiture should be. Their subjects stand alone, uneasy and isolated – revealing something intimate and essential about their characters in the process.
This is as true of his first works as his final ones, composed more than half a century apart. An early photograph, from 1947, shows a smiling boy in Noto, Sicily, facing the viewer with his hands resolutely by his sides. The sparse background, barely in focus, is dominated by a tree, its mushroom-shaped branches resembling nothing so much as the aftermath of a nuclear detonation. One of his last portraits was also of a child, his godson Luke Avedon, another young man confronting the world alone. Except he isn’t smiling, and behind him there is a white out – nothing at all.
And yet if Avedon’s harshly seductive outlook was remarkably consistent from 1947 to 2003, his sources of inspiration were innumerable. His journey has its roots in theatre. In 1949, he spent several months as the associate art director of Theatre Arts Magazine. His short tenure served a purpose: focussing his mind on pursuing talents that could interpret something of the human condition through the roles they played. Buster Keaton’s desperate Vaudeville gestures dissolve easily into the existential anguish of Bert Lahr’s Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Avedon’s subsequent scrutiny of fame emphasised its bleakest manifestations: Michelangelo Antonioni is delivered to us half-paralysed from a stroke, Marilyn Monroe is at her most wounded and remote, Ezra Pound is seen in the grip of mania, while the head of Chet Baker, sunken by addiction, barely hovers in the frame at all, as if shortly to slip from view.
FOND DU LAC – Fond du Lac’s art world is continuing to expand this summer.
The Gallery, 74 S. Main St. Suite 302, will mark its grand opening June 16 with nature photography exhibit “Yellowstone,” captured by owners T.J. and Crystal Schoenborn.
Perched above Hang 10 Poke, Lunar & Lake Book Market and other businesses, The Gallery will provide a space to not only display the Schoenborn’s work, but showcase local artists and host private or community gatherings.
While T.J. Schoenborn grew up taking photos with film cameras, the Schoenborns started photography after their son took an interest in a digital camera he’d gotten from his grandpa, and it turned into something the two of them could do together.
“T.J.’s always had a very creative personality, creative mind, so photography naturally is very creative,” Crystal Schoenborn said. “I’m a little more structured, not as creative, but he started getting into nature photography, and I love nature and being outside.”
Before starting nature photography, and before the pandemic, they shot street photography in large cities like Chicago and New York, but during the pandemic, they took a trip west to Yellowstone and started photographing landscapes and wildlife.
“That’s really when it started to snowball for us,” T.J. Schoenborn said. “We took it seriously then.”
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Now, they live in Montana part time and have a slate of photos of grizzly bears, elk, eagles, mountains and more to display in Fond du Lac.
One of the biggest questions they get from their work is how close they are to the wildlife they photograph, and while digital photography has its tricks for a good shot, T.J. Schoenborn said he’s gotten mere feet away from moose before.
To get many of their photos, especially of the more dangerous animals, they spend hours sitting 100 to 150 yards away until the animal is used to their presence and won’t feel threatened when they do finally inch closer.
Best burger: Where’s the best place to get a burger in Fond du Lac? Here are the 11 best according to readers.
Crystal Schoenborn added that a lot of times an animal will approach them first as they wait, and once a grizzly bear came out of the woods just 10 feet away from where they’d been sitting.
“That was probably the most frightened I’d ever been, and the most exhilarated,” T.J. Schoenborn said. “It was just a combination of all these (feelings).”
The Gallery itself started to come together while they were still in Montana, using FaceTime with one of their employees to look at spaces, and the potential of the space they chose — including the view of downtown from the third floor — prompted them to make an offer on the spot.
They wanted a space for their photos, but also one that allows them to work with other photographers, businesses and artists to showcase their works for a week and sell it, or even just get it out there.
“Sometimes it’s not even about selling it, but about people seeing your work and saying ‘Hey, that’s really cool,'” T.J. Schoenborn said.
The Gallery is also working with Gallery & Frame Shop, Indigo Gallery, Trista Holz Studios and Argentum et Aurum to form a small art district within downtown.
The space can also be used for events like baby or bridal showers, wedding gift openings and more, and the Schoenborns want to implement community gatherings like board game nights.
Additionally, it houses the other side of the Schoenborn’s business, The Studio, whose services include senior portraits, engagement photography, boudoir photography and, starting next year, Crystal Schoenborn’s newborn photography.
Their goal with The Studio is to make their photography services affordable and accessible, because while the cost of a photoshoot is fair to the amount of work and hours photographers put into them, many families can’t afford to get quality pictures done.
The Schoenborns own other businesses in Fond du Lac, including LuZa CBD Wellness Center and Victoria’s Pet Nutrition, so they’re not in this business to get rich, T.J. Schoenborn said.
“We want to be able to impact people’s lives in certain ways, whether it’s having an event up here or taking their picture or whatever it might be,” he said.
The Gallery’s June 16 opening aligns with the Downtown Fond du Lac Summer Wine Walk, but all are welcome whether they are participating in the walk or not.
The doors will open at 3 p.m. on the first day, and The Gallery will also be open 3-8 p.m. that Saturday. After that, hours will vary, but the business will soon have a website set up that includes a calendar.
For more information and updates, visit The Gallery’s Facebook page.
The theme for the sixth round of the 2023/24 Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year (CJPOTY) competition is ‘Wildlife’. Animals make such fascinating subjects and we’re looking forward to seeing images from your wildlife encounters, whether that’s with tiny insects in your back garden or majestic elephants from a safari. The photographs can be taken anywhere and at any time.
This round of our monthly competition is open for submissions until 23:59 BST (00:59 CET and 15:59 PST) on 30th June 2023.
To submit your entry follow the link to cjpoty or click on the CJPOTY button at the top of any of our website pages. You can submit up to three entries for £2.00 plus payment processing costs (£0.26). Images should be Jpegs at least 1920 pixels along their longest side but no larger than 2MB.
Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year prizes
At the end of the month, the Camera Jabber team will pick one winning image and nine runners-up from the June entries. The photographer of the winning image will receive a voucher from MPB.com to the value of £500 which can be spent on anything from a huge range of kit from the World’s biggest platform for used photographic gear.
All 10 of the selected images will go into our shortlist for the year.
We’ll do this each month in 2023 so that by the end of the year, there will be 120 shortlisted images. These will then go before our fantastic panel of judges who will decide the 1st, 2nd and 3rd-placed images.
The photographer of the first-placed image overall, as decided by the panel of judges, will receive a voucher to the value of £1000 from MPB.com as well as a trophy and the title ‘Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year 2024‘. The photographers who come second and third will receive vouchers worth £500 and £250 respectively.
You don’t have to enter the competition every month, but you are welcome to do so and the more shortlisted images you have at the end of the year, the greater the chance of winning the top prize.
CJPOTY VIP Judges
At the end of the year, our illustrious panel of judges has the onerous task of selecting the first, second and third-placed images overall from the shortlist of 120. Our judges are:
Benedict Brain – Photographer, journalist & Sigma ambassador Sophie Collins – Chief Marketing Office at MPB, Trustee of Royal Photographic Society Donna Crous – Food photographer, author, Nikon Europe ambassador and Rotolight Master of Light Ross Hoddinott – Landscape photographer, wildlife photographer, author, tutor, conservationist Tracy Marshall-Grant – Arts Director, curator and producer Denise Maxwell – Multi-genre photographer and lecturer Carolyn Mendelsohn – Artist and portrait photographer Paul Sanders – fine art photographer Jemella Ukaegbu – Photographer & founder of UK Black Female Photographers (UKBFTOG) Christina Vaughan – Founder of Cultura Creative, the home of inclusive stock photography
Follow the link to find out more about the CJPOTY judges.
About MPB
Founded by Matt Barker in 2011, MPB is the world’s largest platform for used photography and videography kit. MPB has transformed the way people buy, sell and trade equipment, making photography more accessible, affordable and sustainable.
Headquartered in the creative communities of Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, the MPB team includes trained camera experts and seasoned photographers and videographers who bring their passion to work every day to deliver outstanding service. Every piece of kit is inspected carefully by product specialists and comes with a six-month warranty to give customers peace of mind that buying used doesn’t mean sacrificing reliability.
Thirty-five wild animals which had been caught in Ho Chi Minh City were returned to the wild on Wednesday.
The Ho Chi Minh City Forest Protection Department cooperated with the management board of the Lang Sen Wetland Reserve in neighboring Long An Province to release the animals.
The 35 animals included pythons, giant Asian pond turtles, yellow-headed temple turtles, Mekong snail-eating turtles, and golden thread turtles.
They had earlier been voluntarily handed over to the Ho Chi Minh City Forest Protection Department.
A 63-kilogram python is released into the Lang Sen Wetland Reserve in Long An Province, a neighbor of Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Supplied
Among the released animals was a 63-kilogram 4.5-meter-long python which had been handed over in February by Dang Dinh Quoc, a 55-year-old a resident of Hoc Mon District.
Quoc said he bought the python in 2000 when it was as big as his little finger and had raised it for 23 years.
It was the largest python that the Ho Chi Minh City Forest Protection Department had received from local residents in the past 10 years.
Turtles are set free at the Lang Sen Wetland Reserve in Long An Province, southern Vietnam. Photo: Supplied
The animals were released after being cared for by the Cu Chi Wildlife Rescue Station in Ho Chi Minh City.
The Ho Chi Minh City Forest Protection Department last Thursday also joined hands with the management board of the Phuoc Binh National Park in Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam to free 28 wild animals, including Javan pangolins, long-tailed monkeys, rhesus macaques, pig-tailed macaques, stump-tailed macaques, elongated tortoises, and Asian box turtles.
All of them had been handed over by residents and organizations to the Ho Chi Minh City Forest Protection Department.
Two Javan pangolins are released to the Phuoc Binh National Park in Ninh Thuan Province, south-central Vietnam. Photo: Supplied
Australian artist Deanna Maree creates 100 species of birds on slices of wood in hundred days. In April 2020 she challenged herself to paint a bird each day for 100 days. She just uses gouache and sliced wood logs to create her mixed-media portraits of colorful birds from different species.
In her words “I have always been drawn to birds and all that they represent, and I love painting birds because there is so much variety and variation in the bird world. I had fun bringing each bird to life on the timber, I enjoyed the tree/bird connection…and I found gouache to be very flexible and forgiving throughout the project.”
Scroll down and inspire yourself. Please check Deanna’s Instagram and Website for more amazing work.
You can find Deanna Maree on the web:
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# Daily Bird Painting Challenge – 10 Things I Learnt!
In her former career as a counsellor she’d valued the therapeutic effect of painting, but it was when her husband became unwell 12 years ago that she decided to try it herself.
“There were six weeks when I couldn’t go anywhere,” she says.
Now Diane, along with other talented artists in Dannevirke, will be participating in a regional exhibition at Square Edge in Palmerston North.
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The Combined Communities exhibition will run until June 22.
This piece, called threesome, will be at the exhibition at Square Edge.
Diane is not only contributing her art to the exhibition, she also recently created a piece for the ceremony to name a kiwi chick which was presented to the Polish ambassador at the May 26 event.
Diane created this piece for the naming of the kiwi chick.
She chose to link the two, painting a kiwi on a totara post, including barbed wire to symbolise the struggle through the Second World War.
For Diane, art takes her into the creative side of the brain, but sometimes that means she becomes totally focused on her work to the exclusion of all else.
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One of her pieces, she says, took her 155 hours to do – a piece depicting a scene in Cornwall, England, which included some very fine details.
After 12 years, she still has a passion for what she does and it has come with some good successes.
Diane finds much of her inspiration in nature.
“It’s a place where you can sit quietly, contemplate and process [things].”
The exhibition in Palmerston North is being run for the first time, as artistic director Karen Seccombe was determined to kick something off for the Manawatū-Tararua region to help the local clubs which were currently struggling.
“It’s encouraging and supporting [clubs] to ensure that the arts survive.”
May 31—To see the 14 insects, birds and animals created with Lego bricks and placed amid the hostas, blooming rhododendrons, fragrant lilacs and other plants and flowers at Holden Arboretum in Kirtland is to quickly become convinced that they’re art indeed.
Look closely, and it’s no surprise to learn that the large butterfly perched among the flowering columbines in the Holden Butterfly Garden took 400 hours to build from 60,000 Legos. Double-takes come en route to the wildflower garden when the “Rototiller” seemingly left behind actually is another creation from Legos. Look closely to see its tires and treads realistically made from the familiar plastic bricks.
A huge green “Praying Mantis,” an “American Bald Eagle” next to a tree with peeling bark, and a pair of baby ducklings following mama to water are whimsical and full of life, defying the plastic-brick medium in which they were created.
They’re all part of Sean Kenney’s “Nature Connects,” an outdoor sculpture exhibit residing amidst the blooming of spring along easily walkable paths in the Arboretum gardens between Corning Visitor Center and Corning Lake. The exhibit will remain in place through Sept. 4.
A map of the Arboretum’s core area, available at the entry gate, shows where the sculptures can be found, inspiring a scavenger hunt by those who visit.
Apollo’s Fire performing ‘Fiddler’s of Dublin’ in Avon, Kirtland
A search for Lego sculptures can be done on foot or even by golf cart, taking the visitor to and through many constantly changing plant collections, including the display garden, hedge garden, wildflower garden, Norweb Tree Allee, Gardner Lakeside Terrace, Lotus Pond, Paine Rhododendron and Discovery Garden.
The creatures, many much-larger-than-life-size, are reinforced, mounted and glued to preserve their integrity through the summer. Each is firmly attached to a below-the-surface disc of steel out of sight and covered with mulch but surrounded by a low fence to prevent enthusiastic viewers from sitting or climbing on them. Each was assembled in parts by Kenney and a team of artists at a professional art studio in Brooklyn, New York, and then crated and shipped before being installed by Atlanta-based Imagine Exhibitions and artists who helped create them with Kenney.
They’re made with regular Legos, available everywhere, although Kenney is the only one in the world permitted to buy the building toys in quantity. He doesn’t work for Lego, but he’s had a long relationship with the company.
After gathering photos and drawings of each subject he’s visualized, Kenney uses graph paper to plan out the shape and size of his creations, but every project starts with old-fashioned Lego block building at his desk.
It’s something the 46-year-old artist has done since he was a boy growing up in New York City, when he was a self-described “Lego maniac,” playing exclusively with Legos.
He’s been a professional sculptor with Legos since 2005, touring with exhibits since 2012 across the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, China, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He lives with his family in Amsterdam, and his exhibits have been seen and appreciated by millions.
To begin or end a visit to “Nature Connects,” stop in at the Corning Visitor Center to build and display a Lego creation of your own. Share on Instagram and tag with the Holden Arboretum handle, @holden_arb.
The Holden Arboretum, 9550 Sperry Road in Kirtland, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and until to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays in June, July and August. Members also have access on Mondays. Admission is $20. Admission is $12 for seniors on Tuesdays. Memberships begin at $25 a year. Members also get free admission to Cleveland Botanical Garden. Visit Holdenfg.org for details.
More Lego fun
LEGOLAND Discovery Center Columbus has begun its annual mini Lego competition, with submissions due by June 4.
According to a news release from the attraction, located in Easton Town Center, kids 5 through 12 build a Lego animal, vehicle or plant and submit a photo of their original creation at LEGOLANDiscoveryCenter.com.
The winner represents Ohio in the virtual competition to gain the title of North America’s Mini Master Model Builder.
(c)2023 The News-Herald (Willoughby, Ohio) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The theme for the fourth round of the Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year (CJPOTY) competition was ‘Movement’ and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the amazing images that were submitted. After a long judging session, we are delighted to announce that the following images will be added to our shortlist to be judged by our illustrious panel of judges at the end of the year.
One of these ten shortlisted images has also been selected as the round winner with the photographer being awarded a voucher from MPB worth £500 – scroll down to find out who.
CJPOTY April 2023 Movement shortlisted images
Michael Harris
Michael’s creativity shines through with this lovely black-and-white image of a paddle boarder seemingly pursued by birds to give a wonderful sense of movement and direction.
Linda Wride
There’s a fabulous balance between blur and detail in this image that really captures the essence of a flamenco dancer.
Linda has two images shortlisted this month and it’s the excellent composition and timing that drew the judges’ attention to this one. The diver is caught perfectly in mid-air while someone looks on from above, giving a sense of scale.
Helen Trust
Helen’s careful composition ensures all the vertical lines in this image are perfectly straight while her exposure delivers a bright, airy feel with the figures blurred to give a sense of movement and activity.
Gail Johnson
This must have been an incredibly difficult image to capture. We love the 50/50 split above and below the water. The pelican’s head is also ideally positioned to make it clear what type of bird we are looking at.
Peter Murrell
Peter’s first-rate panning skills have delivered an eye-catching image of a fleeting moment with lots of movement in the background and just enough detail in the main subject. We also like his black-and-white treatment that removes the distraction of colour to focus attention on the subject and the motion.
Angela Harrod
Angela has used intentional camera movement to create a very intriguing image. We’re not sure whether the people are flying kites, directing a UFO or conducting an unseen orchestra, but the judges kept going back to the image for another look and it’s made it onto our shortlist.
Christine Holt
We hope that Christine has given the canoer a copy of this fantastic image because it captures the drama of the whitewater along with the skill that’s required to navigate it. We love the concentration and effort on his face. It looks great in monochrome too.
Carole Downie
Carole’s image is full of colour and excitement because she’s photographed the riders at the perfect movement, just as they skid around a corner throwing up lots of dust. We love their dynamic, strong posture and the intensity in the eyes of the furthest rider.
Barbara Tasko
Barbara’s image shows a fight for life with a fish wriggling in the bird’s beak after it has struck. The curve in the fish’s body and the splash of water give a wonderful sense of movement.
CJPOTY April 2023 winner: Peter Murrell
Congratulations Peter, a voucher to the value of £500 from MPB is heading your way!
Peter’s image joins the other 9 images that have been selected this month and goes onto our shortlist for judging by our panel of VIP judges at the end of the year for the overall prize.
CJPOTY May: Water
The theme for the fifth round of the 2023/24 Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year (CJPOTY) competition is ‘Water’. We want to see your best images of water whether it’s in the natural or urban environment; an ebbing tide, a mirror-smooth lake, a meandering river, flowing from a tap, spraying from a hose or trickling down an ornamental fountain.
This round of our monthly competition is open for submissions until 23:59 BST (00:59 CET and 15:59 PST) on 31st May 2023 (today).
To submit your entry follow the link to cjpoty or click on the CJPOTY button at the top of any of our website pages. You can submit up to three entries for £2.00 plus payment processing costs (£0.26). Images should be Jpegs at least 1920 pixels along their longest side but no larger than 2MB.
Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year prizes
At the end of the month, the Camera Jabber team will pick one winning image and nine runners-up from the May entries. The photographer of the winning image will receive a voucher from MPB.com to the value of £500 which can be spent on anything from a huge range of kit from the World’s biggest platform for used photographic gear.
All 10 of the selected images will go into our shortlist for the year.
We’ll do this each month in 2023 so that by the end of the year, there will be 120 shortlisted images. These will then go before our fantastic panel of judges who will decide the 1st, 2nd and 3rd-placed images.
The photographer of the first-placed image overall, as decided by the panel of judges , will receive a voucher to the value of £1000 from MPB.com as well as a trophy and the title ‘Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year 2023‘. The photographers who come second and third will receive vouchers worth £500 and £250 respectively.
About MPB
Founded by Matt Barker in 2011, MPB is the world’s largest platform for used photography and videography kit. MPB has transformed the way people buy, sell and trade equipment, making photography more accessible, affordable and sustainable.
Headquartered in the creative communities of Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, the MPB team includes trained camera experts and seasoned photographers and videographers who bring their passion to work every day to deliver outstanding service. Every piece of kit is inspected carefully by product specialists and comes with a six-month warranty to give customers peace of mind that buying used doesn’t mean sacrificing reliability.
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