“Untitled” Jane’s Village - Altadena, California (CA DSC 0379 1-25-25)

Exhibition Announcement - New York City - SoHo Photo Gallery 2025 National

June 5, 2025

I am honored to announce that Jean Dykstra has selected the above photograph to be part of the SoHo Photo Gallery’s 2025 National Competition Exhibition. Ms. Dykstra is a freelance editor and art critic and was the last editor of Photograph magazine. The Exhibition runs from July 2nd to July 20th, 2025, and the opening reception is on July 10th.

I am also excited that this exhibited is in SoHo Photo Gallery’s amazing new space which they just moved in to. They are now located in the Chelsea Art’s District close to the High Line and many other galleries. I would encourage you to watch this video of the first exhibition in the gallery which showcases how beautiful the space is.

SoHo Photo Gallery was founded in 1971 by a group of New York Times photographers that believed there was a need in the photographic community for a cooperative gallery where serious photographers could exhibit their personal work and exchange ideas, learn and grow as artists.

The selected photograph is from my portfolio documenting the devastation cause by the Eaton Fire this past January. I found this “frame within a frame” image while photographing in the Jane’s Village area of Altadena, California which had had entire blocks destroyed by the fire. In a recent blog post I wrote about the artistic elements I have found in the devastation and this image is a great example of that. I have been amazed what the intensity of the fire did to buildings, in this case causing a split tone effect in the plaster of a wall that survived. I encourage you to look at my recent blog posts related to the Eaton Canyon Fire photographs as well as the actual portfolio of those images on my website for more information.

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3516 N. Fair Oaks Avenue, Altadena, California after the Eaton Fire on January 7th. CA DSC 4767 04-14-2025

Exhibition Announcement - Houston Center for Photography 42nd Annual

May 29, 2025

I am extremely honored to announce that Dr. Rebecca Senf from the Center of Creative Photography has selected the above photograph for exhibition in the Houston Center for Photography’s 42nd Annual Center Exhibition. It opens Thursday June 12, 2025, and closes on Sunday August 17th, 2025.

My Eaton Fire Portfolio began on January 7th, 2025, when a fire started in Eaton Canyon (above Pasadena and East of Altadena) and quickly spread because of unusually high winds. I have chronicled details in previous blog posts and my web page for the portfolio. I knew right away I was witnessing something historic, and I felt compelled to document it. I was initially focused on the fire and the destruction but as I have returned over 25 different days since the fire I find I am document more individual loss and how people are dealing with the aftermath. I also soon recognized the destructive nature of the fire left behind many forms and shapes that were beautiful and often powerful. In January I was already taking notice of the frames within a frame caused by the fire. The image above is from a home in the Jane’s Village neighborhood of Altadena. The diamond shape to the right was a window that burned away allowing the viewer to see the brick fireplace. The rectangles on the left side of the image are a covered porch, a front window and a rear window. The exposure was around sunset causing the hue cast. What remains of the home address numbers are the black or grey blobs to the lower left of the diamond window as you face it. Altadena is a wonderfully eclectic and diverse community covering 12 square miles North of the City of Pasadena. Altadena lost over 9,000 structures in the fires.

The Center Annual is Houston Center for Photography’s yearly group exhibition that seeks to highlight and provide insight into current themes, technologies, and practices in photography. This year’s exhibition features 47 diverse works from members of our global photography community and was selected by a Dr. Rebecca Senf who is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe was released by University of California Press; in 2017, her book To Be Thirteen, showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. She has curated fifty exhibitions, including her recent Richard Avedon: Relationships which was shown in Milan and Palermo, Italy and Rotterdam, in The Netherlands, and has contributed chapters, interviews, and essays to over a dozen publications. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar, and in 2020 released a book on Adams’s early years, called Making a Photographer, copublished by the CCP and Yale University Press, now in a second printing.

Dr. Senf & CCP’s recent Instagram post: “Picture Party: Celebrating the Collection at 50,” on view through December 20, 2025, at CCP’s Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery.

The Houston Center for Photography galleries are always free and open to the public.

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Untitled - Arcadia Mall, AAPI Exhibition - CA DSC 1950 5-24-25 William Karl Valentine

Hope Out of Fire & Taste of China Exhibitions - May 2025

May 25, 2025

I happened to see a Nick Ut post on Facebook yesterday showcasing a pop-up exhibition this weekend at the Arcadia Mall (400 S. Baldwin in Arcadia, California) which features some of Nick’s photographs. I was planning on going up to Pasadena already, so I made a detour on the way.

The photographs are good photojournalism, and I love the venue. There mall was packed and there was a constant flow of people stopping and viewing the work. The engagement was great, with everyone viewing both sides of the exhibition and I loved seeing some of the kids engaging so much. I love good museums and galleries but am a fan of taking images to the masses and this exhibition seemed very successful at that. The images are good and many I had not seen before. One that particularly stood out was Genaro Molina’s photograph of The United Methodist Church burning in the Palisades. The cross is prominent in the smoke, and the sanctuary’s large circular stained glass was gone, and flames were shooting out of the opening. The image is powerful. My only criticism is the frames are lightweight with low end plexiglass, so the reflections are brutal, and you miss some detail. But it is an exhibition in a public space on easels, the frames are appropriate for that. The Exhibition moves to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda on Tuesday for a longer run. The exhibition has value and is worth the trip to see it.

The exhibition “AAPI Living Heritage” was organized by the Chinese Cultural Development Center. and was turned into two exhibitions together this year. One side has 40 prints themed the “Taste of China”. The other side is titled “Hope out of Fire” was curated by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Ringo Chiu and features 40 prints by 10 photojournalists who documented the Eaton and Palisades Fires and titled their group “Ringo and Friends”.

The Photographers featured are as follows:

Taste of China

Nick Ut

Ringo Choi

Irfan Khan

Michael Nelson.

Hope Out of Fire

Jon Putman

David Swanson

Small Works Exhibition - South x Southeast Gallery - August 2023

July 13, 2023

I am pleased to announce that curator Donna Garcia selected the above photograph, “Owl in my Star Pine” for inclusion in the South x Southeast Gallery’s upcoming “Small Works” Exhibition. The work will be displayed online and in the South x Southeast’ gallery space in Molena, Georgia this August through September. I am also excited that exhibition will hang during “Slow Exposures” Photography Festival: Celebrating Photography in the Rural South, in neighboring Concord, Georgia.

This exhibition call was a chance for me to showcase one of my lesser-known images, in this case a photograph I have never exhibited before. I really like this photograph, but I knew when I made the exposure that the image would not fit in to any of my primary portfolios. Didn’t matter, this is an example why you should make the exposure when you see an image that interests you even if you don’t know how you would ever use it. Like that old paraphrased Winogrand quote says: “You photograph something to see what it looks like photographed”. I also liked the technical challenge of photographing an owl at night that far away.

Background about this Image. If you are familiar with Newport Beach you might not expect to find a home here with two pine trees and a 100’ tall Star Pine on the property, but my house does. I have lived here for 29 years and a couple of years ago I started hearing owls in the neighborhood, eventually they started sitting on the top of my Star Pine. The owls come and go, sometimes I hear them every night for two or three months straight and then they will be gone for several months. I have heard them on a couple times in the last week and not in my tree. I have used a 400mm lens with a flash on my D850 to photograph the owl before and was lucky to have been able to photograph two owls in the tree at the same time. With most of my owl photographs I am standing within 6 feet of my front door. For this submitted image I used my D500 with a 300mm zoom lens because I was in a hurry to get the image of the owl with the alignment of the rising moon. This image lent itself to be cropped square so for this exhibition I had it printed and framed so it was 12” x 12” with no matting (Price $375, no edition set but limited up to 27).

More photographs of the Owls

NB DSC 0854 12-21-22

NB DSC 0869 12-21-22

NB DSC 0872 12-21-22

NB DSC 0873 12-21-22

And a few photographs from last September when the crows were going after a Cooper’s Hawk in the pine tree 20’ away from my Star Pine. I didn’t see the owl at first, he looked like he was just hanging out, but I assume that he and the hawk were both going after the young in a nearby crow’s nest.

Cooper's Hawk - NB DSC 5521 9-26-22

Cooper's Hawk - NB DSC 5522 9-26-22

NB DSC 5548 9-26-22

NB DSC 5565 9-26-22

I am not a nature photographer, but I appreciate God’s creations and find all the birds in my yard interesting (although I hate the crows, they are annoying), so as a photographer, I photograph them, it is just a compulsion I guess at this point.

The Brand Library & Art Center - 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale, California 91201

Brand 47 - Works on Paper

September 12, 2019

Last Saturday night I attended to the opening of the Brand 47 Works on Paper exhibition in Glendale, California. I know one of the artists in the exhibition, Richard Hutman, and I went to support his work.

I grew up in Pasadena, which is next to Glendale, but I was not familiar with the Brand Art Center before.

The Brand Library is the former home of one of Glendale’s founders L.C. Brand. He built the estate in 1904 and the property was gifted to the City of Glendale after his wife’s passing in 1945. Glendale converted the building to library in 1956 and added the Art Center in 1969. The Brand completed a two year remodeling project in 2014. It is a beautiful facility tucked away up by the mountains.

This was the 47th Annual National Juried Exhibition and it was curated by Alma Ruiz who is a former senior curator at MOCA Los Angeles.

I was impressed by a lot of the work that I saw there, especially since given the location of the venue I didn’t know what to expect. The gallery space is outstanding, its well designed, has excellent lighting, and has good flow to the layout. The only downside is the location is a little remote, you have to know about it, and its a ways from the center of the city.

Here are some of the works that caught my attention in the exhibition: (slide show, click on the image)

Easy - Nick Douillard

Acrylic and LED Lights on Paper

Historical Diversity - Carmen Tostado

Altered Books

Steal Away - Buena Johnson

Pencil on Paper

Take What You Need, Give What You Can - Brianna Eng

Risograph printed business cards

Paper Fan & Morning Paper - Lynne Deutch

Photographs

Berol TURQUOISE HB #2 - Richard Parker

Pastel, Ink and Charcoal on Paper

98 Failed Attempts at Trying to Make a Statement with Number - Jade Lowder

Graphite on Paper

98 Failed Attempts at Trying to Make a Statement with Number - Jade Lowder

Graphite on Paper

Works in Folded Paper - Richard Hutman

Seam Line - Susan Melly

Papier-mache, Tissue, Paper, Wood, Acrylic, and objects

Kenzi and Hootie - R.J. Kern

Brand Associates Award Winner

Archival ink on rag paper

If you are in the area the exhibition is worth seeing and again I was really impressed by the space. Exhibitions Supervisor Shannon Currie Holmes is doing good things with this space.