Tourista! A Visit to Brookside Gardens, Silver Spring, Maryland, May 2, 2016

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I had driven into Montgomery County to visit a friend who had made a hobby shooting in the butterfly exhibit at Brookside Gardens, so call it a social occasion, not work, and that’s how I shot: hand-held and with few notes.  Down the line by hours to weeks, one has to make the editorial decision as to the character of the display: tourist or artiste!?  I’ve chosen “tourista” on this set.

If I had shot differently and perhaps with permits, I’d have used the tripod in the conservatory and butterfly exhibition and possibly outside as well.  For the kind of day it was, and for being tired after being in the warm and moist butterfly room, I chose to mosey, lift camera, and shoot, but with just a slight change in attitude, the use of a graduated neutral density filter — I had a card with me but was on the move — would have saved or improved a few shots.

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Communicating Arts to Photograph Studio Catalog of American Abstract Surrealist William A. Roberts

Descent of Neptune, Watercolor, February 2007. (c)2007 William A. Roberts.

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Deep Sea Phenomenon”, Watercolor and Gauche, February 10, 2007. (c)2007 William A. Roberts.

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Cavern Forms, Watercolor, December 18, 2000. (c)2000 William A. Roberts.

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William A. Roberts has an art story that starts in childhood with talent and a devastating fever, suffers in the shadows of a triple murder, and begins anew after a long hiatus.  Aided, abetted, perhaps, by the local coffee shop scene here in Hagerstown, Maryland — just us “old guys” gabbing over coffee and newspapers at the counter — Communicating Arts has agreed to photograph the artist’s collected and still resident works.

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Canery Row, Harvey’s Inn, Watercolor, 1994. (c)1994 William A. Roberts.

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