Description automatically generated" >

June 2026, Jude’s Photography

Dear Carl,

News about happenings at Deliberate Light and photography instruction (see Digital Photo Academy). My views on this month’s photography topic: Jude’s Photography.

NEWS

Upcoming Workshops. I am next scheduled to teach workshops for Digital Photo Academy on August 1^st, 2026 at 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia. You can sign up here.

• Mastering Your Camera Controls (1.5 hours) – intended for DSLR/Mirrorless/Compact cameras (smartphone tutorial available separately)
• Composition in the Field (3 hours) – walking tour around the venue with instruction and hands-on practice composing photos (bring any camera)

New Photo.

Lake at Golden Hour. We have spent a lot of time over the years with my daughter’s family visiting French Creek State Park. On this evening, we wander around the lake front enjoying the quiet, broken occasionally by the thrum of a bullfrog and the calls of birds. We watch a beaver still busy at the end of the day. The people fishing and playing on the pier channel the same quiet activity of a lake getting ready for bed.

(Elverson, PA, 2026)

For a more detailed, enlarged view, see it on my website.

VIEWS

Jude’s Photography

Jude Andress, beloved grandchild, has reached the milestone age of 18. (Where did the time go?) This is a cusp year, what with high school graduation and going to college, a steep part of the becoming-an-adult curve. With many good college offers, Jude chose Temple University and we are glad to see how excited they are about it.

With Jude having graduated from high school last week, I thought it would be a good time to indulge myself as a proud grandparent and tell you about Jude’s still nascent photography.

It began at the ripe old age of 10 months. Jude had gotten hold of a cellphone and managed to take this selfie: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Jude.

I will only say that this photograph could easily appear in a number of exhibitions I have seen.

Over eleven years after this early foray into abstract photography, in March, 2020, Jude and I began to take outdoor photo walks in order to spend time together during the lockdown, the first walk of many that we called “long walks”. These walks had no objective beyond time together sharing photography – what was photographed being more important than how, Jude’s photos were all taken with a cellphone, none being edited. I spent almost no time on “instruction” either, because that was not the point, so these photos are all Jude.

Let me inject here that Jude, on these walks, begins to caper, not just walk. It is the bearing of someone whose interest is piqued by the things they see, and their photos on those walks gave me a peek into what grabbed their attention.

On that first long walk, one of our first sights after leaving our house here in Rose Valley was of this intersection where Jude caught this shadow on the pavement. What I see in this image is the harsh tree shadow reaching ominously toward the homes along the streets and it reminds me of the fearful uncertainty of those early covid pandemic days. I do not know for sure whether Jude deliberately inserted themselves into that scene by including their shadow in the lower right corner, but it makes the photo feel personal.

Those early photos were marked by what I would call documentation, a simple desire to record scenes Jude felt intrigued by. A couple of years into the pandemic, Jude ended a long walk in their neighborhood in Philadelphia with this view from an enclosed back yard.

This is a remarkably good photo, catching the still lingering feeling of isolation then, alleviated by the almost invisible hope of growing things. That sense of isolation is emphasized by the converging lines in the upper half of the buildings on either side intersecting the horizontal and vertical lines of the doors, adding a feeling of distancing from the enclosed space in the lower half of the scene. Again, I do not know if Jude was conscious of these compositional elements, but there they are.

On our most recent long walk, Jude was excited to show us around Temple University. Still intrigued by quirkiness and still growing naturally in photography, Jude captured several notable scenes, including this one.

This window from the Baptist temple (for which the university was named), shows Jude’s developing eye for the unusual in the ordinary. In fact, after I saw this photo, I thought it was so good that I unabashedly took the same picture myself.

Jude may or may not decide to pursue photography seriously. What mattered to me and still matters most is the inestimably precious time we get to spend together. On the other hand, as in everything about Jude, Dru and I cannot wait to see what comes next. Journey on, Jude!

Carl Finkbeiner

Mobile: 610-551-3349 website instagram facebook linkedin digitalphotoacademy