Apr 1, 2019 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 5 min read

Taking photographs these days is as simple as pulling your smartphone out of your pocket, if it already isn’t in your hand, and aiming it at whatever strikes your fancy.

But despite its omnipresence, there still is an art to photography.

“If you want to take a good, quality picture, there are all kinds of things a person needs to know,” Dr. Fred Doerfler said. “And it’s certainly not beyond anybody’s skill to do it. You just have to have an interest.”

The Kittanning physician was among the first-place winners at the annual salon open house of the Photographic Section of the Academy of Science and Art, held March 31 at the Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center, where the 134-year-old amateur photographers’ group meets regularly.

The work on display at the event provided ample demonstration of what Doerfler referred to, the proficiency and desire – and at times, patience – to produce the most striking of images.

What sparked Doerfler’s passion for photography was when his children had grown up, and he had more opportunity to travel and take pictures for posterity.

“One of my friends who was an avid photographer for 25 or 30 years told me, ‘You have a pretty good knack for this. You should do more of it,'” he recalled, and his visits to various parts of the world have lent themselves to his capturing memorable scenes: His winning entry, for instance, is a shot of a sailboat against a Greenland glacier.

On the other hand, photography doesn’t have to involve anything that remotely resembles globetrotting.

“It’s something you can do without traveling from your house,” Upper St. Clair resident Nancy Koch said. “On a cold winter day, you just set up and get creative, and hopefully come out with some good images.”

She has a studio set up in her home, where she specializes in producing still-life tabletop images, an interest she developed through working in advertising and later running her own business.

“A lot of things inspire me,” she said. “Possibly a song title or just a word will come into my head.”

A recent word was pencils, specifically ones of different colors:

“I’ll think, what can I do with pencils to make an interesting composition and photograph?”

Some of her photos at the salon provided the answer, including one featuring a stack of pencils reflecting off a pair of mirrored teacups in what actually merits the description of unique.

Such measures of creativity, in turn, help inspire other Photographic Section members.

“You get to interact with other photographers. You get to see things that they have done, and the subject matter may be something you never thought of,” Mt. Lebanon resident Jay Kuntz said. “Like anything else, the more you can expose yourself to the work and to the individuals who made them, I think the more you can grow.”

He describes his photographic preference as visual storytelling, most often featuring a human subject. That’s something he pursued substantially during his career in live television and remote video production.

“I knew that I wanted to continue with something I enjoyed, but I didn’t want to be lugging around a 28-pound video camera. So prior to retirement, I jumped into the world of digital photography. I hadn’t touched a still camera for probably 25 years,” he said, other than taking informal family photos and the like.

He has enjoyed the transition thoroughly, especially the educational component of interacting with like-minded individuals.

“That’s one of the things I love about photography,” he explained. “If you’ve been doing it your entire life, you can still learn something new tomorrow.”

Some of the folks with work exhibited at the salon have been at it for more than a few decades. West Mifflin resident Ralph Gurley, for example, remembers his first camera as “just sort of a plastic thing with a fold-up wire screen to frame the picture,” and while he was attending Grove City College, he upped the quality to an Argus C3, manufactured from 1939-66 and known as “the brick” for its shape, size and weight.

“It was very easy to take an inadvertent double exposure if you forgot to wind the film,” he recalled. “Not much in the way of interchangeable lenses, too. I think you could change the lens on it, but it wasn’t easy, and I never did.”

A former president of the now-defunct Natural Color Camera Club, Gurley also has a long history of enjoying camaraderie with other photographers.

“Frequently, we may take a short trip to a certain area, and then when we come back, I find that they have taken pictures that I like, and I say, gee! Why didn’t I see that while I was there? So it gives you a different set of eyes,” he said. “It gives you ideas of how to compose your pictures to improve them.”

About the Photographic Section

In 1885, a group of Pittsburgh enthusiasts in the still-new field of taking pictures formed the Amateur Photographers’ Society. Five years later, society members joined with other area interest groups to form the Academy of Science and Art, with sections for the likes of architects, botanists, engineers and microscopists, scientists working with microscopes.

The Photographic Section is the only one still in existence, and it has been based at the Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center since 1977. Meetings are at 7:30 p.m. the second, third and fourth Tuesdays of each month, September through May, and photographers of all skill levels are invited to join.

Featured are lectures by experts, exhibition opportunities, critique sessions, projected digital and print competitions, day and weekend field trips, and expert consultation on digital and film photography, photo composition, portrait lighting and digital post-processing.

For more information, visit pghphoto.org/wp.