Gallery Opening for Photographer Gene Stevens
Penn Camera Rockville
Friday, January 21st
7:00pm - 8:00pm
Mr. Stevens has been working in the computer field for more than 40 years. During this time he has always been involved with photography. His first darkroom experience was in the early 1970’s in Germany and continued thru the early 1980s with a darkroom in his houses. After a hiatus brought on by daughter’s aversion to photography, the photographic juices got flowing with his documenting his son’s sports activities. Pro Photo was utilized to develop those prints and they suggested that he develop a portfolio and present those photos to Blanton Studio for possible employment as a sports freelance photographer. In that capacity, Mr. Stevens was the first photographer at Blanton to utilize digital images for high school sports using his 6 meg Fuji S2. At this point Mr. Stevens was able to see the results of his images and they began to improve dramatically. The computer replaced his darkroom.
After honing his skills with Blanton, Mr. Stevens was offered a unique opportunity to continue yearbook freelance sports photography with LifeTouch Studios but with a guaranteed minimum yearly stipend. Freelance frees have permitted Mr. Stevens to upgrade his camera from a Nikon F90 (90s, F100, Fuji S2, S3, S5) to the Nikon D700 to produce over 1.4 million digital images. Lenses were upgraded to the 2.8 series of Nikkor lenses as well as a couple of 1.4 lenses. Mr. Stevens has continued his development via schooling offered by Penn Camera. He got introduced to Adobe Lightroom and High Dynamic Range Photography by Chris Alvanas. Later Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS instruction, by Eilot Cohen of Penn Camera, permitted Mr. Stevens to take his photography to the next level. Using Trey Ratclift’s tutorials (Stuckincustoms.com), Mr. Stevens is preparing for his retirement from computer security positions when he will transition to photography full time. To that end, he has underwater images for sale at Atlantic Edge in Gaithersburg and has created a commercial web site http://clarityphoto.smugmug.com/ to complement his personal web site http://www.clarityphotos.com/ . Mr. Stevens hopes to expand his event photography (weddings and sports) to include travel, underwater, and commercial assignments.
