ART19

Cape Cod Camera Clubs

Cape Cod Art  /  ART Annual 2019 / , ,

Writer: John Greiner-Ferris

Cape Cod Camera Clubs

ART19

Cape Cod Art  /  ART Annual 2019 / , ,

Writer: John Greiner-Ferris

“Peaches” by Fran McDermott

Cape Cod Art Center Camera Club

“The camera club at the Cape Cod Art Center is a place where like-minded people can share their hobby, improve their skills, and make lifelong friends,” says Scott D’Amato, the club’s vice chair. 

With its emphasis on education, mentoring and practicums, the club was founded in 2008 by Executive Director Roberta Miller, who was president of the board of directors at the time, and who is also a photographer. She envisioned a club that embraced all things photographic. “Skill level is not an issue. You just have to love photography,” says D’Amato. 

Fran McDermott, the club’s chair, emphasized that individual members help one another, sharing their experiences and knowledge. “Photography is part technical and part art form,” she says. “There’s a lot to learn and it’s never ending.”

“milky way over salt pond” by John Tunney

Past president and founding member John Tunney says that every camera on the market is excellent. “If you know what you’re doing, no one is going to know if it’s a three-thousand-dollar or a three-hundred-dollar camera.” For Tunney, who teaches photography and exhibits and sells his work at art fairs all over the Cape and throughout New England, the tools now available to photographers are so powerful that it’s easy for photographers to go overboard. “It’s like listening to music through headphones and you keep turning up the volume until you can’t hear anymore,” he says. His approach to photography is more like a painter’s, and he says he looks at more paintings than photographs. “When I shoot I’m looking for things that are expressive, that look like they have something to say,” he explains, “and then I have to figure out how to get that feeling across.”  

John Greiner-Ferris

John Greiner-Ferris is a writer and playwright. He is the co-founder of Boston Public Works Theater Company and the founding artistic director at Alley Cat Theater. John has written many articles for Cape Cod LIFE over the years, including artist profiles for our annual Cape Cod ART issue.