Photography

Some consider Baltimore Ravens star linebacker Ray Lewis, 37, an artist on the football field. But that's only one area where he expresses himself. You'll find creativity in how he presents himself -- he designs most of his suits -- and the world he sees around him in his photography -- both of which were on display at Maryland Art Place's "LUX" Gala. "The Sun Diaries" is a group of five photos Lewis took of his favorite subject, the sun. "My art really symbolizes something that man doesn't control.

Cars are a defining aspect of the American landscape in John Petro's exhibit "Parked Outside the Door" at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House. Although people are rarely seen in these color photographs, cars appear in almost every shot. A typical photo features a single car parked near a single house, as if to emphasize that ours is a mobile culture. Indeed, there's even a shot depicting a red truck parked next to a mobile home in Cloverlick, W.Va. Ironically, though, Petro often takes photos of junked old cars that aren't going anywhere.

Nature photographer Michael Oberman, a resident of Harper's Choice, will teach beginning nature photography from 7:15 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. Sept. 8 and 15 at Slayton House in Wilde Lake Village Center. An outdoor photo shoot is planned for Sept. 13. Oberman's nature photos have appeared in national magazines and newspapers. www.howardcountymd.gov/oa/50+expo.htm.

Gov. Martin O'Malley Monday announced something that had been widely known in Baltimore at least for the last two weeks: That the Netflix series "House of Cards" was back in town to film its second season. The White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington Saturday night opened with a spoof featuring Kevin Spacey that was filmed on the "House of Cards" set. And crew members have been working for the last two weeks inside the Baltimore Sun building on Calvert Street rebuilding the "House of Cards" newsroom set. But principal photography on the the second season officially started today, according to the Maryland Film Office.

OAKLAND MILLS resident Bonnie Johnson has turned her passion for photography into a career. She had been taking pictures for 12 years, but found her niche after her children were born. Her daughter, Nara, is 10, and her son, Kade, is 7. "I took lots of pictures of my kids when they were small," Johnson said. "When they got into preschool, people started asking me to take pictures of their kids." That was the beginning of her photography business, simply called Bonnie Johnson Photography.

A teenage girl in a two-piece bathing suit stands on a sunlit beach, leaning slightly on one hip as she stares at the camera. From a distance, it could be an innocuous vacation snap shot, albeit one blown up to nearly 5-by-4-feet proportions. But the more you look and the closer you get to Rineke Dijkstra's color print, "Hel. Poland, August 12, 1988," the deeper and stranger the photograph becomes. Maybe it's the bandage placed over the girl's navel, or the half-friendly expression on her face, but something tells you that all is not quite what it seems in this portrait against the sea and sky. The eye takes in more and more of what is there, and starts to fill in what is not there.

Photography since 1970 has been dominated by two contradictory trends: one toward the "straight" tradition of modernist realism, the other toward the subversive, debunking pastiches of postmodernism. James Welling, whose meditative photographs of commonplace objects and everyday scenes are the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, straddles the divide between these conflicting impulses with a serenity that seems completely natural and unforced. The exhibit covers Welling's work between 1974 and 1999, the equivalent of several photographic lifetimes for many fine art photographers, who usually can be expected to produce only about a decade's worth of truly original work during their careers.

GIRL'S NIGHT OUT / / Through Nov. 26 at Baltimore's Contemporary Museum, 100 W. Centre St. -- 410-783-5720 or www.contemporary.org.

SEATTLE - Getty Images Inc., the largest provider of stock photographs and images to media companies, has signed an exclusive agreement to make photography from National Geographic magazine accessible through its Internet site. Financial terms weren't disclosed. The Seattle company will begin offering the National Geographic Image Collection, best known for photographs of travel, wildlife, adventure and scientific imagery, on its www.gettyone.com in the third quarter. Getty, whose biggest rival is Corbis Corp.

Dorothea Lange's photos of migrant workers in the 1930s go right to the heart of the matter.Her "Children of Migrant Agricultural Workers in California (Children in Automobile)" (1937) shows three boys crowded together at the back window of a run-down-looking car (actually, it looks more like a truck). Their worried expressions show that poverty has aged them far beyond their years. Their confinement in the car symbolizes their confinement in the prison of poverty. They recall, ironically, the words on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Ryan Twentey, an advance placement photography teacher at Parkville High School and a resident of Bel Air, won $10,000 this week as one of two national honorees of the ASCD 2013 Outstanding Young Educator Award. The award was announced Sunday at the association's 68th annual Conference in Chicago. Twentey said he was "humbled to be recognized for what I enjoy most about teaching: empowering my students with skills to succeed," Twentey said. School officials said that during his 12 years at Parkville High, Twentey has worked on systemwide curriculum projects and served as chairman of Parkville's Career and Technology Education program School officials said Twentey is known for working to help students define, and develop, skills they need for their chosen fields.

Weddings are changing and wedding photography education needs to change, too. This is the principle behind “Capturing Love: The Art of Lesbian and Gay Wedding Photography” by Kathryn Hamm, president of GayWeddings.com, and Thea Dodds, a veteran wedding photographer. Together, the two are on a mission to enlighten photographers on how to pose and capture same-sex weddings through their visual guide. On Tuesday, Jan. 28, the authors appeared together in Baltimore at an editorial meeting for Two Bright Lights, an online publicity platform, to discuss and promote their book.

Lewis R. "Lew" Bush, a photography director whose career at The Baltimore Sun spanned nearly two decades, died Friday of complications from dementia at his home in Palm Coast, Fla. He was 80. "Lew was skilled at his trade and knew cameras and film back in the days when we didn't have what we now have today," said John H. Plunkett, a retired Baltimore Sun assistant managing editor. "His job was not easy. He was up early and stayed late into the night. " Lewis Richard Bush was born in Miami and raised there and in Asheville, N.C. His family eventually returned to Jacksonville, Fla., where he graduated from Robert E. Lee High School.

Once upon a time, people interested in taking a picture used a device known as a camera. Taking pictures was all that this device did. It could never make phone calls. Or play music and video. The pictures were captured on something called film, which came in a roll and had to be inserted into the camera. A certain number of photographs could be taken on each roll, and the used roll had to be removed from the camera to be developed. The development process took time. And chemicals.

Some consider Baltimore Ravens star linebacker Ray Lewis, 37, an artist on the football field. But that's only one area where he expresses himself. You'll find creativity in how he presents himself -- he designs most of his suits -- and the world he sees around him in his photography -- both of which were on display at Maryland Art Place's "LUX" Gala. "The Sun Diaries" is a group of five photos Lewis took of his favorite subject, the sun. "My art really symbolizes something that man doesn't control.

John E. Sparks, an artist, educator and a nationally known printmaker who developed and chaired the department of printmaking at the Maryland Institute College of Art for nearly 40 years, died Aug. 2 of prostate cancer and pneumonia at Meritus Health Center in Hagerstown. The former longtime Charles Village resident was 69. "I respected John a great deal. He had, how shall I put it, a lot of attitude and I'm sure he rubbed some people the wrong way, but he was an artist," said artist Raoul Middleman.

A recent working vacation reaffirmed my appreciation for the difficulties that emerging artists face in getting their work shown and reviewed. My experience stemmed from a basic photography course I took at the Maryland Institute, College of Art earlier this year. My project involved reprinting a portfolio of photographs I had taken some 25 years ago during a documentary project on urban poverty in the South American city of Medellin, Colombia. My pictures were taken in the city's shantytowns, which at that time were home to more than 100,000 poor rural migrants from the countryside.

Ryan Twentey, an advance placement photography teacher at Parkville High School and a resident of Bel Air, won $10,000 this week as one of two national honorees of the ASCD 2013 Outstanding Young Educator Award. The award was announced Sunday at the association's 68th annual Conference in Chicago. Twentey said he was "humbled to be recognized for what I enjoy most about teaching: empowering my students with skills to succeed," Twentey said. School officials said that during his 12 years at Parkville High, Twentey has worked on systemwide curriculum projects and served as chairman of Parkville's Career and Technology Education program School officials said Twentey is known for working to help students define, and develop, skills they need for their chosen fields.

Thomas W. "Tom" Cooney, a retired architect and a highly regarded fly fisherman who also enjoyed teaching the sport, died Aug. 10 of pulmonary fibrosis at his Bel Air home. He was 75. The son of an electrical engineer and a homemaker, Thomas William Cooney was born in Baltimore and raised on Old Harford Road in Parkville. Mr. Cooney was a 1955 graduate of Parkville High School and attended the Johns Hopkins University. For 27 years until retiring in 2002, he worked as an architect for Nelson-Salabes Inc., a Towson architectural firm.

John Cheney Wood, a Baltimore artist who worked in a variety of media, died July 20 of advanced Parkinson's disease at his summer home and studio in Ithaca, N.Y. The Mount Washington resident was 90. The son of a master carpenter and an executive secretary, John Cheney Wood was born in Turlock, Calif., and raised in Concord, Mass., where he graduated from high school. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1943, and after completing flight training, was a pilot stationed in Marfa, Texas.