Speakers

Billy Weeks has worked as a journalist for over 39 years. His career started with the Chattanooga Times in 1984 as a staff photographer.  In 1995, he became the Photo Team Leader, and in 1999 he was named Director of Photography/Graphics at The Chattanooga Times Free Press and in 2010 he became an independent documentary photographer working in many countries.

As a photojournalist, Weeks has covered assignments that range from the World Series to small villages in Central America and Asia. In 2016, he was honored to give a TEDx talk “Two Views in Documentary Photography.” In 2023 and 2021 his sports photographs was awarded a top honor in Pictures of the Year International.  His photographs of poverty in Honduras were selected as an award of Excellence for editorial photography in the Communication Arts Photography Annual. Additionally, he has won the Gordon Parks International Photography award twice. He was awarded the Freedom of Information award from the Associated Press and over 50 awards for journalism.   CNN and Photography District News featured his photographs on baseball in the Dominican Republic and Central America. His work has been exhibited at the New America Foundation in New York City, Hunter Museum of American Art, Art of Photography Show, Slow Exposures, South x Southeast, and several universities.

Weeks is an Associate Lecturer in communication at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an adjunct professor at Southern Adventists University. He has been a visiting speaker at many Universities and a presenter at serval workshops.  He believes that not only should journalists cover their assignments, but should also give something back to their profession. Today he lives in Ringgold, Georgia with his wife and a blind Labrador retriever.

AUGUST PSC PROGRAM:

GOING FORWARD BY LOOKING BACK

Richard and Louann Smith, PSC members and avid amateur photographers, will present the program at the PSC meeting on August 17.  The title of their presentation is “Going Forward by Looking Back”.

This program will offer a different way of dealing with the photographer’s version of writer’s block. Maybe you’ve had that experience where your photographic creative juices have dried up, and nothing inspires or motivates you.  How to get out of this funk?  The Smiths think that one of the best ways to move forward is to look back at the work of photographers with established artistic reputations, to study their way of seeing the world and how they compose photographs to communicate their vision. 

The Smiths will focus on four 20th Century photographers whose work has inspired them. The stunning, critically acclaimed images created by these photographers are displayed in museums and books, but you may not have heard of them at all or know their work only vaguely.  The Smiths will show you some of the work of these photographers, talk about what they have learned from this work and how it has influenced their own photography.

Looking back at the work of these four photographers may change your view on what constitutes the boundaries of good photography. It could move you out of your comfort zone and encourage you to experiment with new ways to find and communicate your vision through photography. 

Betsy Bird of Ride the Sky Equine Photography spends her days doing insane things to make horses look at her. Clearly, she’s desperate for attention.

Outside of acting like a total weirdo, she invests in growing her business, hanging with her favorite dog, Nitro, mentoring photographers, dealing with her teenagers’ angst, and planning her next big wheels-up adventure.

Betsy is a Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) with the Professional Photographers of America (PPA). She serves on the Board of Directors for the Professional Photographers of East Tennessee and is an active member of the Tennessee Professional Photographers Association. She is also a professional member of the Equine Photographers Network.

Betsy’s award-winning work has been featured in a variety of publications, Hair of the Dog, and Equine Photographers Network, and is found

 throughout homes and stables in the United States. She has also been featured on The Business Animal Podcast, Scenic Trend, the Chattanoogan, and Shoutout DFW to name a few.

Betsy has a strong background in entrepreneurship, building a brand, goal setting, and workflows that work for business. She also has a lot of experience in training and empowering others.

Be a Unique and Creative Photographer – all for the cost of a drone

Show me the world in a way I have not yet explored will always get my attention. We spend most of our lives viewing the world from three to six feet off the ground while sitting or standing. Likewise, most beginning photographers shoot from these exact same heights because that is the easiest to shoot from by hand or tripod. If you want to photograph a unique image of animals or children, you are quickly taught to photograph them at eye level, and if you want to push creativity, shoot from the ground, looking up. And this same principle can be applied to any subject smaller than us.

Only in recent years have we been able to go in the other direction easily. While early photographers did photograph from balloons, and I can’t tell you how many photos I’ve taken from a tall painter’s pole, it has been with the advent of drones that things have become accessible to the general photographer. While it is much easier, it is still new enough that photographers are exploring this viewpoint in new and exciting ways. The news photographer’s competitions are being swept by them.

We’ll review various exceptional images to inspire you and then discuss how you can step into this new exploration while being safe and hopefully not breaking the law.

Myra has been involved with photography in some form or fashion since she was 10 years old. Myra’s father was a Shriner in the Alhambra Dune Buggy unit and taught her how to use his Nikon camera to photograph their routines. Jump ahead to many years later when she bought her own Nikon DSLR and became a strong hobbyist photographer. Her time is split between her many loves of photography, competitive duplicate Bridge, travel and caring for her parents.

Myra considers herself a ‘lifetime” learner. In photography there are endless things to learn. She loves all aspects of photography such as understanding wildlife and their habits, image manipulation through textures and other means, and maximizing RAW images in Lightroom and Photoshop. Infrared photography is the latest area of intrigue.

 Myra and Larry have been blessed to have traveled the world over. Their cameras are always there to capture this beautiful world and especially the wildlife it contains.

 Myra would like to give a special shout out to members of The Photographic Society of Chattanooga that have shared their knowledge with her. A huge thank you goes out to Donna Bourden, Bill Mueller, Mickey Roundtree, Pat Gordy, and Bob Edens. All of these wonderful people and many others have mentored her along the way.

Our presentation – Africa – An Amazing Wildlife Destination

Myra and Larry have been to Africa five times, primarily to the Sabi Sands region (near Krueger Park).  Our presentation will assist the viewer in preparing for this magnificent trip. We will discuss planning, viewing safaris on the internet, navigating Africa, equipment, clothing, how to travel there, when to travel there, along with tips and stories about our adventures. If Africa has ever crossed your mind as a destination, please join us for this presentation.

Light Painting!

Program: Kathryn Northcott, M.Photog.,Cr Photog., C.P.P.

Find out how she got into the genre of Light Painting photography. She will show us photographs, before-after transformations and general stories of how these images were created! Kathryn is one of the Top Light Painters in the nation. She has been hired to Light Paint planes, trains and everything in between!

Light painting is a unique and highly complex method of photography that uses specialty continuous lighting to make a series of images of a subject from the same vantage point. The resulting exposures are merged and blended into a single photograph that highlights the subject in a way not possible through any other photographic style or technique.

She will be leading us in a Workshop the following night and teaching us how to assemble on Saturday morning. You will want to sign up for this Workshop! 

Light Painting Workshop

Tom and Pat Cory are semi-retired nature and travel photographers who have been members of PSC for many years. For 35 years they led photography tours throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and the Pacific Rim. In addition to their travels they have published three photography books and had their work featured in numerous publications such as Outdoor Photography, Nature Photographer, the PSA Journal and Sierra Club Calendars.

Creating Images with Emotional Impact

Ansel Adams once said that the challenge in photography is how to create an image that goes beyond technical expertise, an image that elicits an emotional response in both the photographer and the viewer of the image.

In our presentation we will explore a wide range of images from wildlife to waterfalls, the grand landscape to close ups, some that succeed and some that fail to meet the challenge.