After almost 2 years with the blue Andrea theme I had been using, I decided it was time for a change. I’ve converted to the “Twenty Fourteen” theme instead. I think it’s much cleaner looking, don’t you? I like consistency, but there comes a point where you go past consistency into the realm of boring and dusty. So it was time for an overhaul. I don’t think my site brand really is “blue” – and the white background makes the images stand out better.
Category Archives: News/Announcements
Peoples Choice Voting – Onward Compé 14
Here’s one instance of where Richard Daley’s admonition to “get out, vote early, vote often” is actually legitimate! Please go visit my entry in the Onward Compé `14 competition, and vote for me in the Peoples’ Choice category. You can vote daily, so please do!
Another image published – Eastern Sierra Center for Photography website
I submitted a photo to a call for entries from the Eastern Sierra Center for Photography the other day, and the photo was accepted! It’s even #1 in the series. The photo is one I took a while back of the Surratt house in Washington DC. The theme of the photos was “Motels”, based on a quote by William Borroughs –
“Motel, motel, motel, broken neon arabesque, loneliness moans across the continent like fog horns over still oily water of oily rivers.”
The motel connection in my image is a little tenuous, but Mrs. Surratt took in boarders to her home to help pay the bills before she was hanged for her alleged role in the Lincoln assassination (she was the first woman ever executed in the United States for a crime she may have only ever been tangentially involved in). I also felt the mood of the scene put into image the words in the Burroughs quote.
There was a requirement that the image be made with a large format camera (one of the primary missions of the Eastern Sierra Center for Photography is the promulgation of large format photography).

The photo was shot on Kodak Portra 160 with a Canham 5×7 wood field camera using a Kodak Commercial Ektar 12″ lens.
Please go visit the Eastern Sierra Center’s website and read about their very worthwhile mission – supporting the continued use of view cameras for contemporary (and future – they have a program to expose kids to view cameras!) photography.
Thinking of site statistics…
I love looking at the WordPress statistics, if only to see from where in the world people are visiting my blog.
I think the most exotic place that’s ever visited is Kyrgyzstan. And I know the numbers for China are off because most Chinese have to find a hole in the Great Firewall of China to read my blog and so they show up as coming from a proxy somewhere in Europe or the Americas. And for a whole host of reasons, the US is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, dominating the nearest competitor by more than 10:1 (more people online, I write from the US, I write in English…).
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| 24,198 | |
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Silly Stats: 200 followers
Woo-hoo! I now have 200 followers on WordPress! (And about 800 from Facebook and Twitter). Silly, meaningless, but fun. I’d rather have 200 readers who care about what I post and interact with me than 200,000 nameless faceless statistics. Thank you all for reading, commenting and caring!
PhotoSlam 2013 – part of FotoWeek DC 2013
I submitted six images to PhotoSlam, one of the events of FotoWeekDC 2013, and have been accepted! PhotoSlam is like a poetry slam, but with photos. Photographers put their work up on a projector screen, and the audience votes. PhotoSlam is curated, so it’s not just show up with your thumb drive and take a turn – you have to submit your five piece portfolio in advance, plus a single “best-of” image. The prize is a show of your work at PhotoWorks next fall. PhotoSlam will be held at Busboys and Poets, 14th and V Streets NW on Sunday, November 10. The show starts at 8pm, but get there early as the room fills FAST (it is recommended that you be in line at 7:30). There is a requested $15 donation at the door. Please come out and support me if you can make it, I’d love to see you all there. And if you do come, please let me know! For those who can’t make it, I’ll be showing work from the DC at Night series that’s (still!) up on the wall at Mad Momo’s Restaurant.





And the “best of” single image that I’m submitting is:

Opening Reception Invitation – Friday August 2, 7-10pm
I’m having an opening reception for my exhibit, “The Colors of Night” on Friday, August 2, from 7-10pm at Mad Momos Restaurant, 3605 14th Street NW. The exhibit runs from August 2 to the end of October.
From the Mad Momos invite:
Mad Momos is proud to present photographs by DC area photographer, Scott Davis. Please join us for the opening reception to enjoy the photos, meet the photogrpaher and sip on complimentary California Champagne.
What is the color of night? It is indigo, it is fluorescent cyan, it is neon reds, yellows and blues. It is sodium-vapor pink, and glowing incandescent orange. It is all of the above, filled in with the colors of your imagination. It is the color of time slowed down, motion blurred, things and people half-seen through their background, perceptions distorted.

I have been shooting a lot of night-time work both in black-and-white and color, for several years now. Photographing long exposures at night gives you a creative freedom to accept serendipitous happenstance in your work that you would reject if caught in 1/60th of a second. Blurred motion becomes a good thing. People become icons. Cars are ghostly, their tail lights and headlights reduced to abstractions and records of things that were, like handwriting on paper. Colors become incredibly rich and even more important, since sometimes it is only by color that you can define and understand an object. The mixed lighting you find in a photograph of a night scene changes our perception of mood in a way you aren’t aware of when you are there – your brain color-corrects light sources automatically so things look “right”, but capturing them on film, which can only record what’s actually there without interpretation, reminds us that we do in a manner of fashion walk through the world with rose-colored glasses.
The Chemical View @ ArtDC Gallery, Hyattsville, Maryland – Opening reception 6/1/2013
I’m showing seven of my platinum/palladium and gum bichromate prints at ArtDC as part of The Chemical View, an exhibit of alternative process photographic prints.
Who: artdc Gallery
What: The Chemical View
Where: 5710 Baltimore Ave., Hyattsville, MD 20781
Exhibition dates: 5-26-13 to 6-23-13
Reception: Saturday, 6-1-13 12 to 7-10pm
Web: http://www.artdc.com
Curator: Barry Schmetter
Alternative-Process Photography Exhibition to Open at the artdc Gallery on June 1
The Chemical View: Alternative Process Photography will open on Saturday, June 1 at the artdc Gallery in Hyattsville, Maryland. The show will highlight the work of eight Washington-area artists working in the medium of alternative process photography. The show will include examples of tintypes, ambrotypes, platinum and palladium prints, cyanotypes, Van Dyke prints, bromoils, gum prints, and hand-painted liquid emulsion prints.
“This is a rare chance to see a wide range of handmade prints that represent the gamut of chemical-based photographic processes.”, said Barry Schmetter, the show’s curator. “The artists are drawing on the history of the photographic process to explore contemporary themes.”
The artists included in show are: Scott Davis, Henry Friedman, Eddie Hirschfield, Carole Hollander, Suzanne Izzo, Joanna Knox, Barry Schmetter, and George L. Smyth.
Eddie Hirschfield http://www.emhphoto.com/
Carole Hollander http://www.carolehollanderphotography.com/
Joanna Knox http://www.joannaknox.com/
Barry Schmetter http://barrys.carbonmade.com/
George L. Smyth http://glsmyth.com/
Scott Davis http://www.theflyingcamera.com

Busy weeks ahead
When it rains it pours… I’m going to have several busy weeks ahead getting ready for three (THREE!!!) shows at the same time. I’m going to have work in a group show of large format photography at the River Road Unitarian Church, an alternative process show at the ArtDC Gallery, and a solo show at Mad Momos, a restaurant here in DC. Fortunately the Mad Momos show won’t be until the end of June, so I’ll have more time to prepare for it.
For the group show at the Unitarian church, I’m contributing some of my color nighttime shots of DC –




The ArtDC gallery show will have my 14×17 palladium prints from Eastern State Penitentiary (don’t have them printed yet so I can’t show them – the negs are too big to scan).
Mad Momos will feature my “street” photography I think – mostly my documentary stuff from around DC. Probably all color work, but I haven’t decided yet.
2nd Prize, Rangefinder Magazine B&W/ Alternative Process contest!
Well, the results were announced today, and my Ficus, Recoleta was awarded 2nd Prize in the contest overall. You can see the results here – April 2013 Issue, Rangefinder Magazine.

