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March is National Disability Awareness month. My friend and neighbor, Christian Huber, is president of the Bucks Disability Pride Club at Bucks County Community College. It was enlightening to  interview him and learn about the club.Christian told me that the people in the club are "proud of who we are as disabled people despite the challenges we face". In fact, Christian told me that even though sometimes he wishes he didn't have his disability, and even though his disability makes life more challenging, he sees definite blessings in what he has had to face. He sees the world…

Women photographers - a subject near and dear to my heart. It's been fun researching them. One, Florestine Penault Collins, I wrote about last month.One of the earliest women photographers I found was Julia Margaret Cameron. She was given a camera by her daughter in 1863, when she was 48, and this was her start. She wasn't respected in her day. Her work was called "slovenly" and full of "mistakes". But today she has had a strong impact on modern photographers. She is known for soft focus and close crops. The image to the right is titled, Vivian…

Gordon Parks, one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century. I had heard of him, but really didn't know anything about him until I started researching for this blog post. What a fascinating person he was!He made a huge impact with his still photographs, and he also was a writer, film maker (he directed the movie "Shaft"), and composer.Parks was born in Kansas in 1912. He was a self-taught photographer. He was inspired by the likes of Dorothea Lange. Parks said, "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against  poverty, against racism, against all sorts…

February is Black History Month, so I thought it would be fun to look at the history of black photographers. From Jules Lion, who made daguerreotypes in New Orleans in 1839, the year after they were  invented, to contemporary photographer Yannis Davy Guibinga, black photographers have made significant contritions in journalism, portraiture, fashion and art.P.H. Polk was one of those artists. He went to school in 1916 at Tuskegee Institute with the intention of becoming a painter like Van Gogh or Rembrandt. But he was told by the institute's founder, Dr. Booker T. Washington, that he should take…

Hanging pictures can seem like a daunting task. With a few tips, you can hang them perfectly the first time, without making your wall look like baby swiss cheese.Hang the portraits at an appropriate height.  People tend to hang their pictures too high instead of where the eye naturally goes. You want to hang your pictures so that the center of the frame is about 57" above the floor. If you're hanging your pictures over a couch, place the bottom of the frame about 6"-8" above where someone's head would be (you don't want them banging their head into…