Newtown’s Flagpole Photographers

Revealing The Stories Behind Their Winning Shots

By John Voket

Whether it was Don Brooks’ Japanese Iris, Dr Micheline Williams’ African sunset, Darrell Harrington’s sunrise over Wells, Me., Sandy Schill’s contemplating tiger or a tiny little frog discovered by Adrianna Gomez along the Pootatuck in Sandy Hook, each of these local shutterbugs has preserved a moment in time that are now a part of the club’s history.

These five Newtown rsesidents were among a cluster of club members from the region who captured top honors this year during Flagpole Photographers Club’s Annual Members Exhibit. The showcase of striking and evocative images remains on display in the community room at C.H. Booth Library until April 27.

Each of these local winners discussed the stories behind their winning shots.

Sandy Schill bagged her People’s Choice Award thanks to the votes of her peers and visitors to the club’s April 2 opening – and the universal appeal of one of the most striking subjects in nature. Her striking image of a tiger, “Contemplating,” was captured during a photography junket to the Bronx Zoo.

“This was more of an intentional shot,” Ms Schill explained. “Another club member and I went on this field trip specifically to take shots of tigers and lions.”

This image was culled from among 25-30 frames of this specific exhibit.

“I probably shot 250 to 300 frames that day,” she said. “The challenge of this series was you’re shooting through the plexiglass, so you always have to be concerned about glare in the shot.”

Using a Canon XSi, she employed the stock “55-250 mm digital zoom lens to get that nice blurring when zooming in tight to his face,” shared the shutterbug.

“It was a cloudy day, so I didn’t need a polarizer. I was shooting on manual and I wanted a fast shutter speed in case the animal moved so I went at 1/100 with an f-stop to 5 or 6 to get the blurry background and the sharp features on his face.”

Ms Schill said she only got into photography about two years ago, and has found “tremendous support through the club.”

“They taught me that it’s OK to turn the auto setting off,” she said. “I like that the more experienced members pitch in, and at each meeting, every image gets critiqued. I learn as much from that as I do from the speakers and workshops.”

‘Morning Glow’

For Darrell Harrington, who is enjoying his first year in the club, he displayed both a sense of natural skill and technical expertise taking the first prize ribbon in the Color Image category. At the time he snapped the three exposure shot entitled “Morning Glow,” he was still relatively new to the world of Single Lens Reflex (SLR) photography.

“When I took that shot I had only been an SLR owner for about a year and a half,” he said. “I bought one when daughter was born, July 2009.”

Mr Harrington said he heard about the club and “joined to meet like minded people in the area.”

 “I’m an analyst by profession, so I’m sort of an education junkie. So any time there is an opportunity to learn, I take it,” he said. “It’s also a way of pulling out my creative side.”

His found shot was early in morning while he and his family were on vacation in Wells, Maine.

“I went out to shoot around 5 am to get sunrise shots while everybody else was still asleep,” Mr Harrington recalled. “I probably took 150 shots at various angles until full sun up. I was shooting right along the shore and local breakwater.

He admitted that he reviewed his series of images later and didn’t find anything spectacular about any single shot. That’s when he got the idea to overlay three sequential exposures that were snapped in the frame of about 1.5 seconds.

“It was one of those crazy things you don’t see at first, but I went with it,” he said. “Three instantaneous frames.”

According to Mr Harrington, he generally shoots on an Aperture Priority (AP) setting, “probably around a 6-7 range aperture. These shots were with a tripod.”

His camera is a Nikon D90, and he accomplished his winning shot with his 18-105 mm kit lens.

Ultimately, he said, he wants to get into sports photography.

“As a sports lover, being on sidelines is great,” he said. “Last year I started shooting Milford Pee Wee Football for a friend of mine who coaches.”

Mr Harrington said he recommends the Flagpole Photographers to anyone looking to improve their camera skills, regardless of their skill level. “I plan to remain in club as long as I’m in the area.”

‘Lonesome Tree’

On the tail end of a long day during a service mission to Ghana a couple of summers ago, Dr Micheline Williams was bouncing along with dozens of others on a bus traversing a desolate plain on the way back to camp.

“We took this long trip to the shore to assist at a refugee camp, and by the time we were heading back, most of the people on the bus were falling asleep,” she recalled. “But I was looking out on this incredible sunset.”

That sunset provided the moment that took this year’s Bruce Allen Open Print Award. Dr Williams described her award-winning image, “Lonesome Tree,” as a moment a photographer sees in the mind’s eye.

“If you’re a good photographer, you constantly see pictures — it’s everything you see,” she said. “And when you see a moment like this you better hope you have a camera with you.”

In this instance, the moment was made as the bus driver temporarily pulled over, permitting Dr Williams the opportunity to wield her Canon Powershot SLR.

“I shoot mostly on Program setting,” she said. “I originally showed this image to the club as a sunset assignment and got a good reaction so I thought I would enter it this year, even though  it was shot in 2008.” Besides cropping out some additional “visual clutter,” there is no additional filtering or manipulation she said.

A Flagpole member for four years, Dr Williams said she originally joined when a club member and patient took interest in the photo albums she kept in her office waiting room.

“He said, ‘You have to join,’ and four years later I must say it’s been a rewarding experience,” Dr Williams said.

Iris & ‘Camouflage’

Don Brooks didn’t have to go further than his own driveway to snag the 2011 Jeannette Talarino Flower Award winning shot of a Japanese Iris, which he noticed in his wife’s front yard garden.

“I was coming home one day, and I pulled in the driveway and there it was in full bloom,” Mr Brooks said. “So I got out my camera and tripod, and put a piece of black paper behind it to enhance the contrast.”

Using natural light, the Flagpole Photographers Club co-president said he used a macro setting on his Canon 5d Mark II and a 24-105 series L lens, an ISO of 160 and an f-8 setting at 1/60.

“This was not a planned shot, although I’m always looking for flower pictures to put in this exhibition,” he said. “I had forgotten about this one, but I was going through some shots I came across it, did some cropping and color adjustment, and I thought it would be a nice one to enter.”

Mr Brooks said he has been a photographer since his teenage years when his father hired him to work at a small town newspaper in Mount Sterling, Illinois.

“He got a commercial photographer to show me some stuff and we set up a darkroom,” he said.

Besides his award-winning Iris, Mr Brooks also has some of his work featured in the current issue of the Newtowner magazine. He also shoots landscapes and some portraits of friends and other subjects, “just for fun.”

He’s been in the club for eight years, and is pleased to see its membership at an all-time high this yar with 53 participants.

Adrianna Gomez also proved with her Dave Kriger Nature Award winning shot, called, “Camouflage,” that you don’t have to go far to find willing photographic subjects.

“One day last summer, my boyfriend and I went down to the Pootatuck River in Sandy Hook to take waterfall pictures,” she said. “He wanted to do some fishing so he went upstream and he’s actually the one who saw the frog.”

Ms Gomez said she went with a low exposure on this series, “so the flash wouldn’t scare the frog.” Using her Canon Rebel SLR, she set the f-stop to 1/32 and the ISO to 200.

“I put the camera on a rock to steady it and took quite a few frames,” she said.

Initially, Ms Gomez said she joined the Flagpole club because she enjoyed taking pictures. Her winning image was snapped just a short time after joining.

Since she became a more serious student of photography, she has taken a weekend symposium to broaden her skills. One of the tricks she learned was how to capture effective nighttime photography.

“I try to apply some of what I learned every time I use the camera,” she said.