I am very excited to say that this fall during “Atlanta Celebrates Photography” month, The Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur will showcase my very first solo photography exhibition of my fine art images entitled “Shape & Shadow”. The two month long show will consist of my architectural abstract photography that I have been working on for the last decade along with some of my commercial montage illustrations. It’s a really great gallery right in the heart of Decatur with large windows facing the street. Canon Explorers of Light will sponsor the exhibition as all the work was done with Canon digital cameras and printed on my Canon large format printer. I am planning a three-hour evening Canon program on October 27th at Professional Photo Resources in Atlanta open to the public to attend. The following night, October 28 will be an open house reception at the AIA Decatur gallery that I hope many of my Atlanta friends will be able to attend. The show will run for all of October and November at the Decatur Campus Gallery. Got lots of work ahead to get ready for this and I will give some updates along the way as I prepare for this. Here are just a few of the selected images I will be showing…. Hope to see you there!
Just back from our first trip to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks where Helene and I were teaching this past week. We had a great group of attendees for the Digital Imaging Institute’s second annual “Imaging in Ophthalmology” workshop. Our days were long, but very rewarding as we started each day around 4 a.m. to be on the road by 5 for photographing in the best morning light. Instructors and attendees then spent the late mornings and early afternoons in digital imaging classes. Topics ranged from basic photography and Adobe Photoshop Extended, to advanced medical imaging and Raw capture processing workflow. Then it was back outside in the evenings to photograph again. Longest days of the year gave us good shooting light till almost 9 pm each night. Then we would meet back in class again to download and process images until late at night. From landscapes to wildlife, we had our hands full every day. Got lots of new material to work with for future tutorials and webinars. Thanks to Cathy and Mark Maio and all the instructors for making it a great week! Here’s just a sample of some of the images I did.
(click to enlarge images)
Lots of opportunities to photography the wildlife all week in the two parks.... Elk, deer, bear, moose, bison.... They got it all.... But there's more to it than that... 
All week long, this grizzly bear and her three new cubs were hanging out up the street from the lodge we were staying at. Everybody got such good images of them except me.... When it came tho the best animal shooting situations, I never seemed to be in the right place when they were close to the road. Wasn't going into the woods after them, so I got what I got and have to work harder at it... Besides the photography skills, you need some luck mixed in with a lot of patience to be good at this. I got a whole new respect for this speciality in photography. 
I am going to need a lot more practice to get good at wildlife photography. The only wildlife cooperating with me this week was this little guy.... Still never saw a moose....
Of course we had to stop and watch Old Faithful go off. It draws a big crowd. 
I always find time to shoot some textures. Yellowstone was full of great color and texture. I will use these in other composite illustrations in the future. There kind of cool all by themselves as well.
We had our first official book signing Friday night at the DK Art Gallery Friday night to a full house of excited Marietta residents wanting to get the first copies of the 6 1/2 lb coffee table book. The response from everyone was just incredible, and this book is something the entire city can be very proud of. Doug, book designer Michael Leidel, and myself signed the first copies for over 4 hours as the first books were picked up by people who bought them in advance along with local residents coming in on the First Friday Art Walk they have at the square every month. Some people bought several copies as gifts. There are still a lot of copies to be signed, so I will be busy getting all of that done in the next week.
I have a new portfolio section on my web site dedicated to the project that can be viewed at www.DiVitalePhotography.com. I also have been working on some black and white versions of the images and have posted them on a web site if you would like to see at www.divitalephotography.com/marietta_homes.
