Another year, another slate of awards for Park City Photography Club members.
It’s easy to see why. The five who entered the Intermountain Professional Photographers Association’s annual photography competition, held in November at Pictureline in Salt Lake City, each submitted photos that show a unique way of seeing the world.
Those five were Bill Tafuri, David Winegar, Howard Meltzer, David Breslauer and Liz Dranow, who won the extremely prestigious Photographer of the Year.
Their competition was stiff, too. This year featured approximately 25 artists entering 205 images in 11 categories. Five Professional Photographers of America-trained Master Judges outside of Utah judged each work using the rigorous 12 Elements of a Merit Image, which evaluate areas such as visual impact, composition, lighting, technical excellence, storytelling and more.
For this series, each photographer reflected on their winning photos, what went into each success and how they think about their craft.
This series starts with a spotlight on Tafuri, who won Rookie of the Year for his image, “SLC Library S Wing Night.”
The photo is a dramatic black-and-white nighttime architectural image of the Salt Lake City Library’s south wing. The unique building slopes downward on its south end, canted pillars driving into the concrete below. A few open local shops glow, their light hot white in the black-and-white scheme.
Tafuri, also a member of the Wasatch Camera Club in Salt Lake, was sitting there waiting for a meeting to start. No one was loitering, rare for the area, and Tafuri felt the moment was right: He pulled out his camera and took the shot.
“It’s a decorative wing,” Tafuri said. “I don’t think it has any particular purpose other than a few little stores that you see in the bottom, but it’s fun to be around, and it’s nice on a beautiful summer evening.”
Tafuri, 84, is a retired geologist who spent his whole life out in the hills. The way he tells it, his father gave him a black-and-white Rangefinder during his first trip to Alaska for work. He packed the hearty camera all over the place, dropped it in a stream once, picked it up and kept on going. He grew to take photos to show his family where he’d been for work.
“I scared the living hell out of my family hopping out of helicopters and things like that, seeing grizzly bears at close range, that type of thing,” Tafuri said, “but I just kept going on it.”
The advent of digital photography was a second wind for him. Where access to or space for a dark room was once necessary, a computer can sit instead. A whole lab in a box, he said.
This was his first year entering the competition. Joining the Park City Photography Club pushed Tafuri to think differently about photography.
“When I’m not banging on rocks, I’m hunting or something, so I love being out in the hills, and so I take a lot of landscape shots, and I’m trying to go from just taking pretty pictures to pictures that really count, ones that have some impact, that motivate people,” he said.
The other members’ support has made it easier.
“I thank these folks here,” he said. “Everybody here in this room has helped me, and it’s been a lot of fun.”
It’s also been a lesson in “it’s never too late,” he said of earning the Rookie of the Year award.
“It’s always great to be recognized for doing something good. Beats having your face on a post office wall,” he laughed. “I look at photography as trophy hunting. You’re just looking for the one shot that’s really going to have some impact in your mind and impress everybody else. I don’t necessarily do it to impress everybody else or the judges, but myself.”
Tafuri, like every member of the Park City Photography Club, encourages anyone interested to join the monthly meetings, which run about two hours and are spent sharing work, having discussions and taking photo field trips together. About a dozen regulars attend.
The club has been unbelievably helpful in expanding members’ knowledge of photography and pushing them to try new things. Even though it’s small, the group wins “a whole bunch.”
“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.”
Both longtime photographers and beginners are welcome.
“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 interested in joining can reach out to the Park City Photography Club via its Facebook page at facebook.com/groups/ParkCityPhotographyClub.