Apr 20, 2018 By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 4 min read

Good photographers know a good opportunity, as Brad Kavo did when he saw a group of nursing piglets with their mother.

“I got on my belly, wiggled under the fence and was able to catch some of the action,” he recalled. “This one little guy got turned around, and that was pretty endearing.”

The piglet that ended up looking straight at Kavo’s lens inspired the title of the resulting image, “Wrong Way.”

The photo turned out to be the right choice for the Mt. Lebanon High School English teacher as an entry in the Photographic Section of the Academy of Science and Art of Pittsburgh’s Salon 2018: “Wrong Way” took first in the competition’s Animals print category.

Kavo, who just joined the organization in January, took part with fellow members in displaying their work at the Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center for the annual event, held April 8.

Accompanying him was John Tetz, his grandfather, who volunteers at the educational farm in Ohio where the piglets were doing their thing. At 88, he still is an avid photographer, working these days on a project chronicling the restoration of a cemetery.

“I had a little Kodak camera and moved up, and finally went to digital,” he said. “I’ve had many cameras in my life, probably at least 20.”

Many members of the photographic section can share similar stories, including Frank Bruns of Mt. Lebanon, who co-chairs the salon with his wife, Laurie. He received a Leica IIIf, a popular model throughout the 1950s, as a high school graduation present, and his latest work is digital, including his print best-of-show “Joshua Tree.”

“I looked at it and said, it has too much of a red tint because of the dust that was in the desert,” he said about the original version before deciding to cast it in black and white.

Bruns said that for salons of years passed, about 20 percent of submitted photos were rejected before judging by a panel of nonmembers began for the competition.

“The last few years, I think we’ve had a good enough quality of everything that we’ve kind of talked the folks into just saying, we’re going to show anything people put in,” he explained. “They might not get an award, but at least the people can look and see their work. I also think that having more pictures hanging just makes everything look better.”

He and his wife like to travel the world to photograph scenic spots, and his “Cave Under Iceland Glacier” was winner in the Landscape category. The Brunses were part of a trip to the North Atlantic nation made last year by several group members, Jeanine Leech of South Park Township included.

Her “Midnight at the Lagoon” shot there was an honorable mention, and she took top honors in print Macro – close-up photography, in which the size of the subject in the photograph is greater than life – with “Purple Rain,” depicted tulips behind a pane of glass covered with beaded water, with a watercolor abstract in the background.

“I did a program for the photo club in Erie on creative techniques, so I thought I’d try something different for that,” she said, explaining that she’d seen work with a similar concept in the past.

Of major photographic interest to her is sports, especially hockey: She worked as an assistant to the Pittsburgh Penguins’ team photographer and now shoots images for a stock agency. Some of the keys to capturing the action on the ice are setting the camera to high ISO (light sensitivity), low aperture and fast shutter speed.

“Hockey’s hard, because it moves fast and the puck’s small. It’s one of the hardest sports to photograph,” Leech said. “With any sport, you have to learn to kind of anticipate the action. So the more you know about the sport, the more it helps.”

The Photographic Section of the Academy of Science and Art of Pittsburgh, which traces its origins to 1885, meets the second, third and fourth Tuesdays, September through May, at the Mt. Lebanon Recreation Center.

For more information, visit pghphoto.org.