Home Page

Membership
Application

Web Mail Login

Member Forum

Member Gallery

Links Page

Member Profiles
Tom Wortham
Dick Dodds
Linda Miller

Member Profile
Tom Wortham, President
Tom worked as a pharmacist for most of his life, to support his interest and involvement in photography, in some aspect since the latter part of the 1950s.

He uses two different cameras in his quest to capture life. His first love is the Fuji S602 – “this camera is preferable when I want to capture brilliant colors and high contrast situations. Also, this camera's macro function gives extremely sharp images.”

In addition he uses a Nikon D70 and feels this camera's optics are sharper than the Fuji and the response time is much faster, so it is his camera of choice for critical, fast moving subjects. 

His favorite subjects to photograph are Items of nature that posses vivid colors and lots of detail such as butterflies, flowers, birds and deer.

When asked who in his past inspires him in his photography his response was; “It is impossible to narrow this question to one person. Each and every photographer with whom we come in contact has something of value to share, something to teach us and from whom we can learn... if we will only listen.”

His advice to beginning photographers is to, “explore and be open to numerous facets of photography. Don't be so concerned about not being able to produce images like someone else.

In photography, there are rules and guidelines, but basically... there is no right or wrong. Decide on what you like, how you like to shoot it and pursue that with diligence.

Most recent lesson learned, from our November '07 Show And Sale – Regardless of "what" you shoot and "how" you shoot it, sooner or later, there is going to be someone who will appreciate your work.  “

My favorite photography quote is: "Always overexpose the snow."

Favorite Photo

The Light Within
by Tom Wortham

To me, an appropriate title for an image is almost as important as the image itself. Sometimes perfectly suited titles come to me as I am viewing a subject through the lens. Such was not the case when this picture was taken. It was only after the original image was edited, that my wife came up with this fitting title.

The picture was taken with the sun's illumination directly overhead, not a generally preferred situation. But sometimes you just have to go ahead and shoot! The flat lighting on the horizontal surface of the inflorescence obliterates any detail, but in doing so, the sun rakes down the vertical sides of the bloom, providing a very dramatic illumination that appears to actually becoming from inside the bloom. I really like the way the vertical veins are illuminated, producing a shadow of the finger-like spadix inside.

This particular image was cropped to place the vertical portion of the bloom near the left side of the frame.

I cannot remember precisely, but I am sure that I focused on and exposed for the vertical portion of the bloom. Believe it or not...this picture was taken with the Nikon D-70, utilizing the 18-70mm lens that came with the camera. The f/stop As usual, the camera was set on Aperture Priority. As I looked through the lens, I kept "stopping" the lens down (in an effort to gain the maximum Depth-Of-Field) until the camera chose the slowest shutter speed that I felt I could hand hold. Unfortunately, that particular setting is not embedded in the image's information.

I always underexpose brightly illuminated flowers. I'm sure I began by exposing this image by a minus 0.3 f/stop. Likewise, I feel certain that I made several more exposures, underexposing by successive clicks of the Exposure Compensation dial on the camera. The final exposure is never of primary importance to me, as I ALWAYS edit the image anyway.

I always shoot to include more in the frame than I will eventually want in the final image. Compositionally, I cropped the image such that the dominant bloom was placed off center and to the left, allowing the vertical portion of the bloom to curve gracefully over toward the near black, negative-space on the right of the image.

I left some darkened portions of leaves on the right side, to balance the elements within the frame. They are there, just enough to let the viewer know that something" is there, but not illuminated enough to compete with the primary subject. I love the way the dark green leaves on the left of the image move in a diagonal manner down to, and help call attention to the "light from within."  The underexposing of the overall scene helped emphasize the very slightly illuminated, lighter green leaf margins.

The very underexposed, unopened bloom in the background also helps balance the right half of the image. If that bloom and the other dark green botanical items on that side had been removed, there would have been too much of an ominous black.