To View Recorded Video Presentation: A “New” Look at Creativity
Topic: A “New” Look at Creativity
Where: Zoom Meeting (online – see latest Newsletter for more info)
When: Tuesday, April 5, 2022, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Speaker: Michael Boatright
About Our Instructor, Michael Boatright
MICHAEL BOATRIGHT
Storytelling is my passion and I bring this enthusiasm to every facet of my client work. Throughout my life, I have consistently sought to explore innovative ways of telling the human story by merging traditional analog photography with digital audio/visual and print techniques to share magical stories unparalleled by others.
My relationship with photography began as a teenager, when my dad, a professional photographer for many years, taught me camera and darkroom techniques. With IBM, I began experimenting with and developing techniques in digital storytelling, leading several large multimedia projects for the 1994 Lillehammer and 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, Disney’s Epcot Center, the World Golf Hall of Fame, the Masters Golf Tournament and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg as well as many others. More recently, I worked on digital media projects for the British Broadcasting Company, National Public Radio and AT&T, and was awarded 5 patents for my work.
In 2014, I opened my professional photography studio and left the corporate world not long after, to concentrate solely making images for clients. In 2018, I earned the title Certified Professional Photographer by the Professional Photographers of America (founded in 1858). My decades in corporate technology management taught me the value of having a professional certification—that my clients can expect a solid baseline of experience, creativity and technical expertise to make images important to their needs. Likewise, my experience as a director for the Georgia Professional Photographers Association’s and as a past-president of the Southeastern Photographic Society, allows my clients to trust that my business operates according to the highest professional and ethical standards.
In 2020, my Dark Houses Atlanta project published photographs of 33 of Atlanta’s theaters shuttered by the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in interviews by local and regional news organizations, WABE’s City Lights arts program, ArtsAtlanta and two live streaming TV-casts—all with the intention of raising awareness of the plight of the live-entertainment community and contributed to the effort that resulted in the passage of the Federal Save Our Stages Act, providing $15B of support for theatrical stages throughout the US.
Digital imaging has made dramatic shifts in the professional photography business. Today, just about anyone can plop down a few hundred bucks in a big box store and hang out a shingle. My response to that business challenge has been to up my artistic game by going back to my film photography roots and I am thrilled to be making portraits for my clients using “old-school” techniques and cameras. There is a quality to an image captured on film unparalleled by digital camera (the proliferation of “filters” to make photos look like film proves that). In this industry,you can no longer compete on price (all the mall photography studios went out of business trying to do just that)–you can only complete with a higher quality product. And people know and
understand the word “ARTISAN.”
My film work has upped my digital game as well, giving me a broad brush of skills to serve my portrait, commercial and fine art clients. Based in the Metro Atlanta Area, my gallery and studio are located in the TULA Arts Center in Atlanta’s Buckhead Arts District.
Michael’s website can be found here.
FB: https://www.facebook.com/michaelboatrightphotography
IG: https://www.instagram.com/michaelboatrightphotography