NANPA Day Two

9:00am Keynote, Wendy Shattil and Rob Rozinski

This husband and wife team told us some of their personal history and showed us some really amazing images from Colorado. I'm more excited than ever to be going with them to Rocky Mountain National Park on Sunday.

After the session ended, my friend Beth told me she was increasingly certain I should show my images during portfolio review on my laptop rather than on paper.

10:30am, Breakout Session, Stock Agencies

We heard from three panelists about how photographers and stock agencies can and should work together, including many interesting anecdotes from Jane Kinne, who substituted for panelist Cathy Aron.

I left a bit early and retreated to my hotel room to whip up a laptop presentation. I have to admit, my filing system for JPEG's could use a bit of sprucing up, but I was able to gather a pretty good set of 800x600 images without too much trouble.

2:00pm Portfolio Review I

I spent half an hour with the photo editor of a popular birding magazine. He seemed to like some of my images pretty well, lingering over my Spotted Sandpiper and Willet. He patiently explained that he never needed to see yet another stereotypical Sandhill Crane, American Avocet, Burrowing Owl shot, and I can respect that.

3:00pm Portfolio Review II

I actually got an early start with my second review, a promiment photographer and workshop leader, thanks to a no-show at 2:30pm. He offered some great composition suggestions, proposing vertical crops of images I did as horizontal crops for my most recent calendar. I realized that after I crop an image one way it can be difficult to see it afresh and crop it a different way.

6:30pm, Conservation Photography event

We heard from three excellent photographers about various conservation projects they are involved in.

Robert Glenn Ketchum talked about the threatened salmon fishery of southwestern Alaksa and a boneheaded copper mine proposed by Ted Stevens. His landscape shots featuring carpets of brightly colored tundra plants and meandering mountain streams were breathtaking, hard to take in. He also talked about the successful effort to prevent development on the Hearst San Simeon ranch and the startling biodiversity he found there.

Michael Forsberg talked about his book On Ancient Wings, his book about Sandhill Cranes. He photographed them from nothern Alaksa to Cuba, from California to Florida, and everywhere in between. His reminiscences about his travels were eloquent, moving, and thoughtful.

C. C. Lockwood talked about marshmission.com, an interdisciplinary effort to promote awareness of the vanishing marshlands of the Mississippi River delta in Lousiana. Although he had everyone laughing with his swamp humor, his sorrow was palpable -- sorrow he must have felt after watching hurricanes do so much damage he says could have been prevented by better attention to marshes anytime during the last thirty years. Deeply moving.