Saturday morning, August 30^th, at 9 a.m. the Sweetwater Camera Club had our 8^th field trip this year. The destination was the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

Mr. Akoubian said during a recent interview,
“I have studied under and taught beside John Shaw, Art Wolfe, Bryan Peterson, Pat O'Hara, Rod Planck, Galen Rowell and John Netherton.  I worked closely with Bill Fortney and Cliff Zenor also of the Great American Photography Weekends.  I was very fortunate to have worked with them and spent time out in the field studying them and their work.“

There were several members of other metro Atlanta photo clubs attending this outing, providing an opportunity for our own members and visitors to meet a number of photographers from outside the normal Sweetwater Camera Club realm.

David’s website is located at http://www.bearwoodsphotography.com. More information about Lensbabies can be viewed at http://lensbaby.com/ . Lensbabies require that you have an SLR rather than a point-and-shoot camera. However, they are an interesting photographic topic in and of themselves, because they allow the photographer to control the point of sharpest focus in an image while blurring all irrelevant background information. They are an important tool in creating fine art photography.

Once this part of the agenda was complete, we continued the field trip by enjoying all the wonderful plant life, flowers and sculptures inside the garden. This season the theme of the Atlanta Botanical Garden is “Sculpture In Motion.” A number of Mobiles and Avante Garde motion sculptures by 16 artists are dispersed throughout the garden area. These sculptures capture “the energy of wind, water, sound, sun, magnetism and touch in more than twenty-five works of fine art.” You can find a YouTube video of one or more of the sculptures here. You can read more about the garden’s current show at http://www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org/site/involvement/sim_overview .

This proved to be quite a visual treat and Mr. Akoubian was very helpful to our members. Thanks, David!