LEARNING THAT RISES ABOVE
As part of BPG membership, photographers enjoy over 80 classes and 140 hours of instruction workshops and speaker meetings each year. Learning events are conducted onsite and via Zoom. The Guild does not conduct monthly cumulative competitions, but rather members participate with the goal of helping each other.
THE BOOTH MUSEUM
THE BOOTH MUSEUM
The Booth Photography Guild is part of the Booth Western Art Museum, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and is tasked not only with organizing and displaying a world class collection of western art, but it is also responsible for enhancing culture through educational outreach.
The museum’s permanent photography gallery (“Picturing America Gallery”) hosts exhibitions by well-known national photographers. Presentations are conducted, and panel discussions are offered by visiting photographers. The museum’s full-time photography curator interacts with BPG Exhibitions, Shows, and guided tours of the exhibits.
BPG Speaker Meetings
Speaker Meetings are conducted the second Saturday of each month (10:00 AM EST till noon) in the Bergman Theatre of the Museum. Zoom attendance is also available. High profile speakers from throughout the world speak live to our group.
Speaker Meetings provide insight into the skills and accomplishments of leading-edge artists. While the tried-and-true principals of visualization, composition and storytelling are a natural focus, speakers also explore emerging creative technologies and tip related to DSLRs, printers, Photoshop, Lightroom, Topaz Labs, filters, and more.
Presentations are videotaped and available to BPG members.
Digital Image Reviews via Zoom
Members (local and national) typically meet the first, third and fourth Saturday mornings of each month from 10:00 AM EST till noon to review and receive feedback and instruction on their submitted images.
Each member submits one or two images for review. Each submission includes the original image (not edited) along with the processed image. The submitter introduces and discusses their image, goals, and challenges. The original image is shown, followed by the processed image and the submitter explains enhancements. The moderator then leads a discussion, wherein the group collectively proposes enhancements including software and tools which might be employed. These are hands-on learning opportunities which are widely popular and well attended.
Saturday Learning Sessions
SATURDAY LEARNING SESSIONS
Growing as a photographic artist entails developing an artist’s eye, envisioning the image before the shot is captured, and keeping up with rapidly changing developments in equipment and software.
Guest speakers or BPG members present and demonstrate their preferred editing techniques, tips, tricks, best practices for workflow, artistic post processing, lighting, etc. Easy-to-use techniques via software products often take an image to a new and impactful level. Some of the software packages used for editing are Luminar AI, Luminar NEO, DXO Silver Effects, DXO Procolor, Topaz Studio 2, Topaz Gigapixel, Topaz Sharpen, and Topaz DeNoise.
Exhibitions & Shows
The Booth Photography Guild offers four opportunities during each year for Guild members to show, compete and sell their work.
BPG conducts an Annual Fall Exhibition which provides an opportunity to participate in the juried Exhibition where selected members hang their work for three months in the Booth Western Art Museum, a world-class national museum and a Smithsonian affiliate. After the approximately 40 images are selected and hung, the judges return to the museum theater in the Fall for a Saturday Learning Session to review and provide helpful commentary as to why the winners won and why other images may have fallen short. This is one of BPG’s more popular meetings.
Mentoring sessions help members select images for submission. Guidance is provided for printing and framing to meet museum quality standards.
The Booth Museum owns and operates the Cartersville Downtown Gallery, a retail space located on Cartersville’s historic downtown square. Annually, three BPG Shows display work. Awards are given and the images are available for sale. These are popular well-attended events and accompany an opening reception. It is the perfect opportunity for developing photographers to have their work viewed by the public.
SHOOTOUTS
Periodically, BPG hosts a shootout event in Cartersville, GA. Members meet, draw three topics from a fish bowl, and scatter about town to photograph on-topic images within a timed framework. Afterwards, members meet to process their images and hand them to two peer judges who select the winners. A slideshow reveals the results. Shootouts offer learning from peers, inspire creativity, reinforce the capture, selection, editing, and submission process, and are a chance to have fun and interact with membership.