Members of the Park City Photography Club are winning awards for how they capture the world.
The group recently participated in the Intermountain Professional Photographers Association’s Annual Print Competition on Nov. 1 at Essential Photo Supply in Salt Lake City.
Their winning pictures show each photographer’s relationship to the craft.
Good things come to those who wait
David Winegar’s “Snowstorm Sheet Music,” which won Nature and Wildlife Image of the Year, shows birds sitting on branches during a snowstorm in Wanship. The birds sit like notes on a musical staff.
“Actually, I wasn’t looking for those birds,” Winegar said. “I was looking for eagles and kestrels.”
But while searching, a huge storm came in with gigantic snowflakes, he said.
“These starlings took refuge in this tree and faced into the wind. And if you look at the birds, even their wings are covered with snow,” Winegar said. “(It’s) a shot that I didn’t pre-visualize … just, I happen to be there, and it’s right place, right time.”
A lot of Winegar’s photos are “right place, right time.” He specializes in landscape and wildlife imagery under the name Park City Photography. An Air Force veteran, Winegar said he’s always had a spiritual connection to the outdoors. He’s made a career out of that relationship, insisting that good things come to those who wait.
For example, another winning shot, “Baby Osprey – Waiting for Mother,” depicts a young osprey in its nest at sunset along the Provo River.
“This is an area and a nest that I probably have done 12 trips to — morning light, evening light, bird’s there sometimes, bird’s not there sometimes,” Winegar said.
The photo’s even angle makes it stand out, Winegar said, because while it’s easy to shoot an osprey from below, getting a level shot is something else. He scaled a rock face using a fissure, he said, then planted himself on a rocky outcrop.
“I didn’t even think there was a bird in the nest,” he said, “so I’m just kind of waiting for an action shot, for the Osprey to come back and land, and all of a sudden I see this little baby’s head come up, and it’s looking for mom, facing into the setting sun.”
A knack for animals
In the world of domesticated animals, Liz Dranow won Animal Portrait Image of the Year for “Garden Sphynx.”
The photo captures a black-and-white, mixed-breed dog posed like a sphynx and bookended by a blurred lavender. The depth of field effect, or bokeh, softens it just so, and though it may look simple, the image was deceptively hard to pull off, Dranow said.
“(The owner) was very patient with me, thankfully,” she said. “Her dog was very patient with me to get just lined up with the lavender and get him looking very dignified and kind of goofy. It took many, many photos to get him exact.”
Dranow had taken the photo at Wheeler Farm in the valley as part of a pet photography class she had enrolled in, partly to shore up her technical skills. This particular assignment had been to have a dog centered in the shot.
“I won’t lie. There were some very high-value dog snacks involved with this,” she said.
Dranow, who does professional pet photography under her business Time Punk Pet Photography, said she believes in rewarding her models with a variety of treats. It’s important to make it fun for them, too, she said.
Her work combines technical know-how with a knack for animals, a flexibility reflective of her circuitous life path. Dranow grew up in Saudi Arabia, went to boarding school in Pennsylvania and ended up at the University of Utah for college, where she “collected degrees,” she said.
Though she works as a biostatistician at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, Dranow also volunteers at Salt Lake County Animal Services taking photographs of animals who have yet to be adopted.
“I can’t change the world with the stuff that I do in my day job. I mean, we move things forward, but we’re not going to cure heart failure tomorrow,” she said. “On the other hand, I can change the world for these dogs.”
Seeing between the lines
Howard Meltzer’s photograph “TEAMWORK” received the Reportage Image of the Year Award.
“It depicts the intense concentration and teamwork between a jet pilot and his ground crew,” Meltzer said.
In the photo, a ground crewmember stands in the foreground facing a jet plane and its pilot. The crewmember holds his left arm straight out, and the photo is framed so that only the jet plane’s right wing can be seen, as if the pilot were commanding the plane’s wing in return — as though the two were communicating through their respective bodies. Meltzer’s use of a long lens condenses the space between them, too, so the shot looks more intimate.
“I waited till his arm was parallel to the wing, and I waited till that nose thing sticking out looked like it was going to poke him in the chest,” Meltzer said.
He took the photo during an air show. The teamwork between the ground crews and pilots stuck out to him, perhaps due to his years doing street photography in New York, Meltzer said.
“That interested me more than the shots of (the jets) falling in formation,” Meltzer said, “because everyone was going to get those shots.”
Meltzer moved to Park City from New York City about six years ago. He originally came to photography through working in the film industry for many years as a producer and cinematographer.
“It was different because I had to get an emotion across in 24 frames a second, or I had two hours to do it while making a movie,” he said. “And in still photography, you literally have one frame to try to get an emotion across.”
Practicing street photography, he learned to soak in a scene and see the details others might miss.
“When I got to a location, I didn’t just start shooting stills,” he said. “I would just sit back for a second and kind of look around.”
His third-place photograph “Primal Ooze” shows the intense colors and patterns found in the thermal springs of Yellowstone during a winter trip.
“We went out there and got some great shots,” he said. “And I just happened to look down instead of up, and that’s what the water looked like.”
A passionate club
Meltzer and Dranow earned “Rookie of the Year” titles for their works, which recognizes the highest-scoring images for first-time entrants.
Winegar also won “Landscape Image of the Year” for “Big Sky Country,” which shows wave-like clouds rolling across the Utah West Desert. “Golden Hour, Golden Years,” showing an older dog standing against Butterfly Lake in the Uintas, also netted Dranow a second-place award.
“When we enter these contests, even though we’re this small club, relatively, we win a whole bunch, you know?” Meltzer said.
About 12 regulars attend the somewhat-informal monthly Park City Photography Club meetings, which run about two hours once a month and are spent sharing work, listening to discussions on topics like AI and occasionally even going on field trips to take photos together, which they later compare notes on to see how everyone approached the task.
Meltzer said the club has been “unbelievably helpful” in expanding his knowledge of photography and pushing him to try new things.
“You go around the room, and people talk about what they’re doing, and they show pictures and they talk … and you just learn a lot,” Meltzer said. “It’s a real cross section of things people like.”
The three members are also interested in ways to grow the club and make it better known in the community. They’re looking for new people to join and ways to show off everyone’s work.
“I’ve been to other communities where, during the summer, they just put everyone’s pictures up along the main street,” Meltzer said. “You speak to the restaurant owners, the clothing store owners, and for the week … they put up pictures in all the stores along the street.”
Beginners are welcome to join the club, too, and maybe they’d appreciate getting feedback and some praise for their work.
“Everybody’s experiences and interests are valid,” Dranow said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’re the professionals, so therefore we’re special people.’”
“Everyone makes good photographs,” Meltzer agreed.
Anyone who is interested in joining can reach out to the Park City Photography Club via its Facebook page at facebook.com/groups/ParkCityPhotographyClub. Find Winegar’s work at parkcityphotography.net and Dranow’s at timepunkpetphotography.com.