WEST READING, Pa. – A popular and longstanding photography studio is making moves while continuing to capture life’s special moments in Berks County.

Zerbe Photography, offering a wide array of photography services including weddings, portraits and commercial services, will hold a grand opening event noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, at its new location, 530 Penn Ave., West Reading.

The event will include photos with Santa ($10; includes digital image) from noon to 2 p.m. and walk-in holiday portrait sessions ($100; includes three digital images) from 2 to 4 p.m.

Grand opening deals will include 20% off portrait sessions booked within six months, 20% off print orders and 60% off all frames in studio (includes print).

Individuals also will be able to enter raffles to win a 45-minute photo session (includes 20 digital photographs) and headshot session (includes two digital photographs).

Established in 1977 as Dave Zerbe Studio of Photography, the journey began with a simple vision: “to freeze fleeting moments in time, preserving memories that last a lifetime,” according to a historical account on the studio’s website.

The journey was led by founder Dave Zerbe, a visionary artist with a deep appreciation for the art of photography.

With a commitment to quality and an unwavering dedication to the craft, the studio quickly gained a reputation for producing images that resonate with emotion and authenticity.

In 2022, the studio experienced a shift in leadership as Wayne Becker, once an apprentice under Dave and long time employee of the business, chose to carry forward the esteemed Zerbe family legacy.

Later that year, the studio rebranded with a more modern look and shortly after, Zerbe Photography came to fruition.

Today, Zerbe Photography continues to deliver a top-notch experience while upholding the Dave Zerbe legacy.

Over the years, the studio has expanded to cover various aspects of professional photography, including senior portraits, family photography, children and newborn photography and professional portraits.

“When you choose Zerbe Photography, you’re choosing more than just a photography studio – you’re choosing an experience,” a message on the business’ website reads.

“Our goal is to provide you with not only stunning photographs but also an experience that’s enjoyable, relaxed, and tailored to your unique needs. Whether it’s your wedding photography, a family portrait session, or a corporate session, Zerbe Photography is here to capture the moments that matter most.”

For the latest Zerbe Photography updates, follow the business’ Facebook and Instagram pages. Info: (610) 376-0379; davezerbestudio.com.

Turns out, Daniel Arsham, the artist whose celebrated eroded sculptures have paved the way to high-profile collaborations, is also a low-key photographer. And we’ll get an eyeful next year, when Arsham unveils his decades-spanning archive of photographs for the first time. 

On view at Fotografiska from March 22 through mid-June 2024, “Daniel Arsham: Phases” will bring together a selection from the artist’s private photo archive, which numbers in the thousands. Featured here are about 30 images that the artist has shot over the years—of nocturnal cityscapes, views from airplanes, rare birds, centuries-old ruins—illustrating how photography has shaped his sculptural practice.  

“Daniel sees the world by both what is there, but also by what is not: negative space becomes subject matter. In his photographs, abstracted figures, skylines and natural elements are reduced to black silhouettes,” said Amanda Hajjar, the director of exhibitions at Fotografiska New York, over email. “Scale is another recurring theme: aerial views, images of space, the stars, the moon.” 

The photographs will be on view alongside a few of Arsham’s key sculptures, highlighting how his preoccupation with negative space, scale, and trompe l’œil has played out across mediums.

The artist Daniel Arsham. Photo: @danielarsham via Instagram

Arsham received his first camera at the age of 10 and would go on to develop a habit of photographing his family, travel, and other life experiences. “Photography was the first thing I made that I felt could be a piece of art,” he told Whitewall in 2015. “Before I made paintings, before sculptures—anything, really—it was photography.” 

Over the years, the artist has held on to his early cameras, including his first Pentax K1000, and amassed other vintage photographic and film equipment to immortalize them in his sculptures. His “Future Relic” and “Crystal Relic” series features various models, from Polaroid to Nikon to Hasselblad, their clay and cast resin bodies purposefully weathered.  

“Photography has always been in the background of Daniel’s career, informing—subconsciously or consciously—his other artistic practices,” Hajjar added. “It is quite revealing to see what he takes pictures of, what interests him, what he keeps coming back to. This exhibition feels like you’re getting an insider view into what piques Daniel’s creative interests.” 

“Phases” will be accompanied by the release of Daniel Arsham Photography, the first book to document his photographic practice. 

Arsham, in the meantime, just dropped his latest collaboration with Tiffany & Co., for which he designed an eroded Venus of Arles bust in bronze to hold the jeweler’s T1 bracelet. The release follows the serial collaborator’s many other partnerships with brands not limited to Hot Wheels, Moët & Chandon, Porsche, Pokémon, Hublot, and Ikea. About 30 of his sculptures are currently on view at “Score and Sound” at the Sculpture Center in his hometown of Cleveland. 

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Sarah Anne Wilson Photography – Professional Portraits & Headshots

Sarah Anne Wilson Photography expands corporate headshot services for CEOs and professionals, enhancing digital branding with bespoke, strategic photos.

CARY, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES, December 15, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — Sarah Anne Wilson Photography proudly announces the expansion of its corporate headshot services, specifically tailored for CEOs, executives, and business professionals. This bespoke service is designed to enhance LinkedIn profiles, company websites, and marketing materials with professional headshots that reflect each individual’s unique professional character.

Sarah Wilson, acclaimed North Carolina photographer, shares her insights on the impact of professional photography in branding: “Today your digital presence is intertwined with professional success, a well-crafted headshot is crucial. It’s not just an image; it’s a strategic tool for personal branding, especially for leaders and executives who are the face of their brand. Our objective is to create headshots that encapsulate your professional persona, giving your online presence the authenticity and credibility it deserves.”

Understanding the nuances of corporate branding, Sarah Anne Wilson Photography offers a personalized experience, ensuring that each headshot captures the confidence of leadership and professionalism. This service is particularly beneficial for CEOs and executives, whose images often serve as the first point of contact in the digital arena. A professional headshot conveys confidence, approachability, and the ethos of their leadership, making a significant impact on their professional narrative.

For business professionals, these headshots are more than just a profile photo; they are a key component in building a personal brand that resonates with clients, colleagues, and stakeholders. In the competitive landscape of digital networking, a distinctive headshot can differentiate and elevate a professional’s online presence.

Sarah Anne Wilson Photography is committed to delivering headshots that are not only visually appealing but also strategically aligned with each client’s branding goals.

For more information on how to transform a professional image, visit https://sarahannewilsonphotography.com/contact-sarah/

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If you could start photography over again, there are probably a lot of things you would do differently. I know I would definitely make a few changes. This great video features an experienced professional discussing what she would do differently. 

Coming to you from Laura BC, this insightful video discusses what she would do differently if she could start over as a photographer. Central to the video’s message is the importance of hands-on experience and self-guided learning in the digital age, emphasizing the value of accessible online learning, which have revolutionized the way we learn photography. These resources provide a wealth of knowledge and diverse perspectives, making it easier for beginners to dive into the art without feeling overwhelmed or overburdened by high formal education costs.

The journey in photography, as presented in the video, is deeply rooted in practice and experimentation. The digital era has significantly lowered the barriers to entry, allowing aspiring photographers to experiment freely, learn from their mistakes, and gradually refine their skills and artistic vision. This process of trial and error is highlighted as a crucial aspect of learning, encouraging photographers to embrace every shot as a learning opportunity. It’s a good reminder that you need to get out there and practice, practice, and practice some more. 

Another key theme in the video is the exploration of different photographic genres. This exploration is not just about mastering various techniques but discovering one’s personal style and preferences. Whether it’s landscape, portrait, or street photography, each genre offers unique challenges and opportunities for creative expression. Don’t just emulate what you see on Instagram; experiment and find what makes you tick.

As an enthusiast and a follower of the photographic arts, I found the video both relatable and enlightening. Its focus on practical experience, personal growth, and creative exploration is a refreshing take on learning photography. The narrative underscores that photography is more than just capturing images; it’s a journey of personal and artistic discovery. Check out the video above for the full rundown. 

After the sun sets over Florida, and the sky and the seas beneath it become pitch black, 55-year-old Palm Beach County dentist Steven Kovacs grabs his photography gear, meets his friends and heads six miles or so out into the Atlantic Ocean. They throw out a mooring line with lights to guide them and their boat, but otherwise darkness stretches thousands of feet beneath them and miles in any direction. After Kovacs jumps into the inky ocean, he descends often 50 feet or more and waits with his camera and two strobe lights at the ready.

Giant fish swim by and check him out—dusky sharks, hammerheads, marlins, silky sharks and swordfish, which have whacked at least one of his fellow divers. “It’s a little uncomfortable when they come in,” he says. “But it’s also pretty thrilling.”

The large predators are not his preferred subjects, however. Kovacs ventures out to capture the small stuff: tiny creatures, often in their larval stage, that are no bigger than a dime. They migrate up through the darkness, hundreds of feet or more. Kovacs uses his camera, a macro lens and those strobe lights to photograph them in stunning detail. “I specialize in looking for the deep-water animals, the rare, deep-water animals,” he says with emphasis. “And so my favorite are things like the cusk-eels—where there’s over 200 species of cusk-eel—and goosefish, anglerfish.” Adults of such fish species mostly occupy the ocean floor, but their youngsters often swim closer to the surface, where Kovacs waits.

To chronicle the larval fish and other creatures, including adult squid and octopus and flying fish, Kovacs dives not just off Florida, but off Hawaii, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico and the Cayman Islands. He became a certified diver in high school, but he couldn’t afford the necessary underwater photography equipment until years later.

The practice of shooting such animals in the deep ocean at night is called blackwater photography, and more and more people are taking it up. Kovacs and other camera operators go home with stunning photos of creatures of exotic shapes, with flamboyant frills, that often have translucent skin accented with brilliant colors.

But Kovacs’ images are not just notable because of the brilliance they capture. They are also valuable to science.

If Kovacs sees a larval fish that he knows is special or that he’s never seen before, he’ll photograph it, collect it, place it in an alcohol solution to preserve it and send it off to scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

G. David Johnson, a curator of ichthyology there, and Ai Nonaka, a contract ichthyologist, study such specimens. “We’re building the only larval fish collection in, well, I’d say in the world,” says Johnson.

Nonaka, Johnson and two other scientists from the Smithsonian, Carole Baldwin and Matt Girard, work with the blackwater photographers. After receiving the photograph and specimen, they’ll add a third identifying component: DNA. Nonaka extracts samples from an eye of a larval fish. The tissue allows the scientists to identify the animal down to the species level while the physical specimen is otherwise preserved for further study.

The Smithsonian scientists first started working with blackwater photographers in 2016. On Facebook, the hobbyists had been asking the scientists if they could help identify larval fishes, and Johnson and another larval fish expert from Hawaii said yes. But while photos showed the larval fishes’ physical characteristics in detail, without DNA, scientists couldn’t always determine the exact species. So Johnson suggested that the divers collect specimens and send them in, allowing the scientists to examine them further.

Such collecting isn’t detrimental to the ocean ecosystem, because most larvae—more than 99 percent in many species—won’t make it to adulthood. And the divers have permits, such as a special activity license in Florida, to collect specimens.

The first specimens came from a photographer named Jeff Milisen, who took samples and photos of larval fishes off Kona, Hawaii. Nonaka says when she saw his photos and collected specimens she thought, “Wow, this is incredible. We’ve never seen the larval fishes like this.”

“So that was a whole new world to me, to us,” she adds. “We couldn’t have done anything like that research without the photographers.”

The blackwater photographs that researchers receive of larval fish continue to surprise them; the same creatures are often drab as adults. In their younger stage of life, the larval fish are often harmless, but they may be mimicking more toxic species, like jellyfish, as a defense.

The old way ichthyologists collected the creatures was to drag nets through the water, which beat the specimens up. Dead animals lost their shape and color, and they were often damaged, so much so that Johnson says the specimens collected in nets look like completely different animals than those in blackwater photographs.

The Smithsonian researchers don’t practice blackwater photography themselves. Johnson earned a license as a scientific diver a long time ago but doesn’t currently dive, and Nonaka is trained to dive but isn’t advanced enough to go blackwater diving and collect larval fish.

Off the Palm Beach coast, the shooters have likely collected more than 200 specimens. Kovacs has collected maybe 15 to 20 larval fish since 2020. The ichthyologists appreciate the photographers’ additional work. “For them to put the extra step in of actually carrying extra gear, and collecting the specimen, and bringing it on board and fixing it is a big effort,” says Johnson.

In 2021, Nonaka, Johnson and colleagues wrote an important paper about how blackwater photography can enhance the study of larval fishes. The researchers wrote that recreational divers and photographers’ observations of the fish can be “priceless,” as they give scientists access to an otherwise expensive-to-research habitat. The images and video can offer an exciting window into the way fishes appear and swim in their environment, and the cooperative efforts between the photographers and scientists could improve the quality of larval fish collections and increase knowledge about the animals. The scientists hope to inspire more photographers to collect specimens, and to encourage their colleagues to take part in blackwater diving themselves so they could collect specimens, too.

Photographers like Kovacs are also observing larval fishes engaging in rarely seen behaviors, such as riding jellyfish, swimming inverted and attaching themselves to other gelatinous organisms with their teeth. Their eyewitness accounts deepen scientists’ understanding of these species. For example, Nonaka says, Kovacs related to her that he can tell a type of anglerfish larva from far away, because it “bounces” in the water as it swims.

So far, Johnson says the team has worked with Kovacs on a few papers, and another is in the works. Nonaka says a species is being named after her due to her dedication to the discovery, identification and curation of larval fishes in collaboration with citizen scientists. She and Johnson marvel at Kovacs’ photos of larval animals such as the bony-eared assfish and the gargoyle cusk.

Kovacs finds many beautiful, interesting larval fish, the researchers say, possibly because he often goes deeper than other blackwater divers. Nonaka says while other divers may go 15 or 20 feet deep, the dentist goes sometimes to 50 and 80 feet. “And so occasionally he’ll get rarer specimens that other people don’t get,” says Johnson, later adding. “Yeah, he’s one of the best.”

We called Kovacs up to find out what drives him.

What are the greatest challenges of blackwater photography?

That you don’t have a bottom. You don’t have any reference. You’re floating out in the open ocean. There’s no operator. There’s no down, so you can’t stabilize yourself. And the animals are not happy to see you. They’re running. They’re moving—trying to get away from you. Technically, it’s much more difficult than regular reef macro photography.

What are the greatest rewards of blackwater photography for you?

It’s seeing animals that you don’t usually see. Just weeks ago, in Kona, we found a deep-water anglerfish that’s never been photographed before, never been seen before. That to me is an absolute thrill. And we work closely with the Smithsonian, showing them things they’ve never seen before.

How often has it happened that you’ve captured something that hasn’t been seen before?

The trip before Kona, we found a species of Ipnops fish that’s never been photographed, never been seen before, period. It happens once every year or once every couple of years. We’re still finding new stuff. That seems to be more prevalent off the coast of Kona, which is pretty much unexplored and is really deep water. In Kona, we go into water that is 5,000, 6,000 feet deep [beneath us] at night. It’s really open ocean, so we’re getting some pretty amazing deep-water animals coming up.

What’s your favorite blackwater image?

Oh, that’s a tough question. I have so many at this point. It would probably be the bony-eared assfish, Acanthonus armatus [pictured in the top image above], that we see off Florida once in a while. It’s one of the most beautiful animals I’ve ever seen underwater. It’s just absolutely gorgeous, and just so unusual and so rare. I mean, the adults live several thousand feet down, so to see these animals is incredible.

If I had to choose, it would be between that and a photo of pelagic nudibranchs mating.

What was your toughest shot?

I mean, some of the images are challenging, but it’s not so much challenging getting the shot, it’s finding the animals. It’s like a treasure hunt. Some of these animals I’ve been looking to find for years. Sometimes it’s just a waiting game. The biggest challenge is to just keep doing it until they show up. I mean, you see all these images, but some of these animals I’ve searched for five, six, seven or eight years.

The hardest pictures to get are of two things actually. The lobsters riding on jellyfish are a real challenge—not to take a picture but to make it look aesthetically beautiful. The lobsters are in constant motion, as are the jellyfish. They are spinning and moving in every direction. To have the lobster and the jellyfish perfectly lined up takes a lot of time and a lot of shots. I’ve photographed them for over 30 minutes—and that’s still not a guarantee I’ll get a good shot.

The second-hardest shots are of some of the deep-water anglerfish. They are small, in the five- to eight-millimeter range, and they hang upside down and move constantly. To get straight underneath something that small and shoot upward while it’s in constant motion is a huge challenge.

And do you have a dream animal right now that you want to photograph?

I do. No. 1 on my list is the hairy goosefish, and only one person in the world has a photograph of it on a blackwater dive. That’s Jeff Milisen in Kona, Hawaii. It’s just the coolest-looking animal. It’s just so exotic.

Which of your photos gets the most attention?

The general population likes colorful photos, especially colorful photos like the lobster and the jellyfish. Things people recognize, like flying fish, will be popular. The rare and exotic are not usually popular because they’re for the fish geeks like us.

And do you ever see marine debris or plastics when you’re out?

When we go to places like Anilao in the Philippines, or Indonesia, there’s a lot of plastic, a lot of garbage in the water. I haven’t seen too much off Hawaii. Occasionally we see it off Florida, but surprisingly not a whole lot yet. I do have a whole bunch of images with animals on my Instagram with garbage. You’ll see the nautilus riding the garbage, the plastic bags, and fish hiding in plastic. If there’s a connection between nature and the garbage, I’ll take a picture and show the relationship.

You post a lot of your stuff on social media. What do you hope that folks take away from the images?

I’m just sharing the beautiful environment. It’s a way to get my work out there in the public, and people may want to purchase it. But I just enjoy sharing what I get to see—and a lot of people don’t get to see.

And have any scientists told you anything about the importance of your shots?

Yeah, they’ve actually done research papers on some of our animals. They’re absolutely thrilled, because we’re providing information they’ve never had access to. They didn’t know how these animals even looked in the wild.

And how does that make you feel when you find out there’s been a paper or you’ve captured a new species?

It’s absolutely thrilling. It makes it all worthwhile. I mean, it just gives me the motivation to keep going.