Lou Janelle
April, 2022 photographer
of the month: B. Vijayaraman
I started taking Black & White pictures in the 70s with a box camera. One of my photos (Sunset), that I took during a trip, won first place in a local Youth Photography Club competition. That encouraged me to get into photography, as a hobby. Later, I bought a rangefinder camera (Yashica) and ultimately a Nikon (Nikkormat) camera (film). I primarily took landscape photos in Black & White. I am a big fan of Ansel Adam. I had my own dark room and developed my B&W film and printed photos with an enlarger. I am a self-taught photographer.
After coming to US in the 80s, I did not have much time or money for photography. I started taking photos again in early 2000 when I bought my first Nikon Digital camera (D40). Slowly I upgraded my camera to Nikon 750 over the years. Now I shoot with Nikon Z7II mirrorless camera and planning on building Z lenses for the camera. I have a Z24-200 mm lens, Z100-400 mm lens and a 1.4 teleconverter.
I take all nature photographs – Landscape, Birds, Animals, Macro, Flowers, Waterfalls, etc. I like to go out with my camera as often as possible and take photographs of birds, insects, flowers, and landscapes. The proximity to Cuyahoga Valley National Park helps me in taking photos of diverse subjects. I love to travel and have visited many countries. I have visited 20 national parks in the US and have plans to visit as many as possible. The Covid has cut down my travel quite a bit. We visited Glacier National Park last year and had a great time.
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I take my photos in RAW mode and process them using Adobe Lightroom. I post my photographs on Facebook, Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/vijayramanphotography/) and Flicker (https://www.flickr.com/people/vjraman/).
The reason for joining the Akron Camera Club (ACC) is to learn from the experts, improve my techniques, and ultimately take better photos. ACC hosts presentations from expert photographers every month and have member critique sessions of photographs every month, which helps me in ultimately becoming a better photographer.
