Select LRA members will present their art at the February 7th concert of the VIRGINIA CHAMBER ORCHESTRA at Capital One Halls of Tysons, Virginia. LRA members receive reduced price on advance ticket purchases.

Media Alert: New Acrobat for Nonprofits Offer Empowers Global Organizations to Drive Greater Impact

• Adobe for Nonprofits empowers nonprofits to amplify their impact with best-in-class creative and document management solutions, including Adobe Express, Creative Cloud and now Adobe Acrobat
• Adobe Acrobat Pro — the product most requested by nonprofit organizations — will be available to qualifying global nonprofits at a new discounted nonprofit rate
• Organizations across the globe rely on Adobe Acrobat to streamline operations so they can focus on their missions

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Nov. 21, 2024 — Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced Acrobat for Nonprofits, a new global offering that will significantly expand nonprofits’ ability to streamline document and business processes and scale their impact with donors, volunteers and the communities they serve. This builds on the Adobe for Nonprofits offering, including Adobe Express, the create-anything app that helps nonprofits quickly and easily tell their stories, inspire action and advocate for change with standout content.

Like all businesses, nonprofits today need a modern workflow to operate efficiently, engage their audiences and achieve their missions. However, they do not always have the resources or expertise to adopt the tools they need. With the launch of Acrobat for Nonprofits, more organizations than ever before can access the most comprehensive set of document and e-signature tools in an easy-to-use interface, making it simple to manage contract and agreement workflows and create engaging educational and fundraising assets — from annual reports, contracts and grant submissions to brochures and white papers. 

With Adobe Acrobat Pro, nonprofits can also grow their digital presence in meaningful ways:

Increasing Visibility and Awareness: Your nonprofit needs to clearly convey its mission, vision and impact to educate the public and attract attention to your cause. Highlighting stories, statistics and recent projects helps establish credibility and raise awareness, which are easy to share with Acrobat’s PDF creation and editing tools.

Fundraising and Donations: Encourage the community to contribute to your nonprofit by creating stunning, downloadable PDFs that you and your supporters can share online and print out for easy distribution.

Engaging and Expanding the Community: Building a sense of community is essential for nonprofit work. Creating PDF newsletters, volunteer sign-up sheets that can be e-signed and other downloadable, sharable materials engages visitors and keeps them connected to your cause.

Showcasing Transparency and Impact: Donors want to know how their contributions are used. Share your nonprofit’s financial information, impact reports and updates on ongoing projects as PDFs, which makes it easy for visitors to search for the news and numbers they want to know more about. This transparency builds trust with the community your nonprofit depends on.

Providing Resources and Education: Educating the public and providing resources to their communities helps nonprofits stand out. Use Adobe Acrobat Pro to create and edit PDF articles, downloadable guides and event information resources on related services, support networks, and advocacy groups.

Advocacy and Calls to Action: Nonprofits can leverage their websites, social media channels and email lists to rally support for specific initiatives, legislative changes and community actions. By providing tools for advocacy, like petitions that can be e-signed and downloadable PDF contact forms for legislators, your nonprofit’s digital network can mobilize your supporters for important causes.

As part of this initiative, Adobe is offering the pro version of Adobe Acrobat — the product most requested by nonprofit organizations — for just $15 per user per year, which represents a 94% annual savings off the regular price.

Adobe for Nonprofits: Supporting Global Organizations with Industry-Leading Technologies

For decades, Adobe has been empowering nonprofits at the forefront of social change, marshalling its philanthropy, strategic partnerships, employee efforts and innovative products in service of organizations worldwide with resources to address today’s most urgent needs. The Adobe for Nonprofits initiative harnesses the company’s industry-leading creative and document management solutions, expert support and training resources to help global organizations modernize their content creation and business operations. Adobe Acrobat for Nonprofits is the most recent addition to the program, which also includes free access to Adobe Express Premium and discounted rates for Adobe Creative Cloud.

Global Nonprofits Partnering with Adobe to Enhance Their Impact

Some of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations power their business and content operations with Adobe technologies. Following are just a few examples of how they are leveraging Adobe technologies to drive positive change:

• Using Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Express to create compelling fundraising content, manage client information, document important fundraising commitments and design engaging educational and campaign assets.
• Using Adobe Acrobat to manage confidential information and agreements, and create grant requests and fundraising collateral.
• Leveraging Adobe Acrobat to send and manage contracts to onboard new staff members, volunteers and program participants, review and send invoices from community partners as well as edit and share fundraising documents.
• Using Adobe Acrobat for organizing storyboard sequences and filming release forms when creating promotional materials.
• Creating educational and social content that engages audiences and brings awareness to nonprofits’ important causes.

Take advantage of an Acrobat Pro account, which Adobe offers to nonprofit leaders for only a $15 vetting fee per license!

About Adobe

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

© 2024 Adobe. All rights reserved. Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Reston Photographic Society’s November meeting will be held on Zoom and welcome back Lewis Katz.  Lewis has received very positive reviews for his prior presentations to RPS.  Lewis will discuss digital photography.

Digital Photography

Fundamentals of Digital Printing. This presentation covers all that you need to know before pressing the Print button. Subjects covered in this presentation include monitor calibration, aspect ratios, ppi vs dpi, ICC profiles including installing them onto your computer, soft proofing, paper types and many other relevant topics. Although geared for Epson printers this is indispensable knowledge for any photographer doing their own printing regardless of brand.

Lewis Katz

Photography has been part of me from a young age. An early memory of my Dad is him looking down through the viewfinder of his twin lens reflex camera. He soon graduated to a Konica rangefinder that was constantly by his side. I vividly remember the slide shows of family vacations as well as more private moments shared by my parents. My first camera was the Olympus Pen F half frame beauty and I soon moved through the full line of Olympus OM models. Fast forward to the digital cameras and images of today. I still shoot Olympus but have added a Nikon to the bag.

Emotive displays were not commonplace in my home growing up. The camera and the image became an outlet for suppressed feelings as well as for artistic expression. Many years after college I lived in southern York county Pennsylvania and its rural beauty. Although I had been out west as a teenager it was here that I truly discovered landscape photography. Through my career in the travel industry many other trips followed including visiting most of the major National Parks.

After moving to Baltimore in 2001 I discovered and joined the Baltimore Camera Club. I was quickly in awe and humbled by the talent and more importantly I found the companionship of fellow members which is so important to me to this day. The Baltimore Camera Club remains an integral part of my photography life. I have been honored and have received many awards from the competitions at the club.

Teaching photography is another essential component of my photography life as I love sharing my passion. I currently teach for the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program, the Capital Photography Center of DC and for private students as well. I live for those aha moments that only teaching can provide.

My favorite Ansel Adams quote is “A great photograph is one that truly expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.” In the same way that your camera captures the light being reflected my photography reflects who I am and all of the experiences of my life.

“A still photograph is the illusion of a literal description, of how a camera saw a piece of time and space….I like to think of photographing as a two way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it as. A photograph must be responsible to both” Garry Winogrand 1974

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Reston Photographic Society’s October meeting will be held on October 21, 2024, at 7 PM (Note new start time) in the Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods. We are excited to host Jeff Horn as the speaker at this meeting. Jeff will discuss his recent trip Borneo, an exotic and unfamiliar area. Jeff’s bio is below and several of his photos are attached. We look forward to seeing you on Monday, Oct 21 at 7 PM.

Jeff’s background in photography was inspired by his father. He was a landscape, nature, and family photographer, and Jeff really got into photography after digital cameras came out. He loves to photograph wildlife the most and has traveled to several parts of the world to photograph different wildlife. He especially enjoyed Africa, the Galapagos Islands, and Borneo. He is the Vice-President of the Manassas Warrenton Camera Club and has competed in club competitions winning several awards over the years. Jeff has learned most of his photography techniques and knowledge from videos and from the competition feedback.

The Reston Photographic Society will meet at 7:30 PM on April 15, 2024, on Zoom.  The Zoom Code will be provided closer to the meeting.  It will be an exciting meeting discussing Artificial Intelligence and Photography.  This session will also be of interest to graphic artists.  Jim Zuckerman will be the speaker.  His bio and some examples of his work are below.

Jim Zuckerman left his medical studies in 1970 to pursue his love of photography and turn it into a career.  Jim specializes in wildlife, nature, travel photography, and digital effects. Jim was a contributing editor to Photographic Magazine for 40 years, and he is the author of 26 books on photography.

His images, articles, and photo features have been published in scores of books and magazines including Time-Life books, publications of the National Geographic Society, the Economist, Life Magazine, and Omni Magazine.  His work has also been featured on scores of jigsaw puzzles, national ads, calendars, murals, greeting card lines, and more.

                               .    .   

Jim leads photo tours all over the world to many destinations in the U.S. as well as exotic locations like Indonesia,Patagonia, Iceland, China, Morocco, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Italy.

The March meeting of the Reston Photographic Society will be held on Mar 18 at 7:30 PM in Room 1 and 2 at the Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods.  We are very fortunate to have Judy Graham with us.  Judy is an amazing landscape photographer and will share her approach with us.  Details are below.

Elements of Creative Landscape Composition by Judy Graham

Judy Graham is primarily drawn to photographing dramatic landscapes, often remote and difficult to get to. Initially her interest was in the desert southwest; however, in more recent years she has expanded her travel to include such places as Alaska, Iceland, Greenland, Bolivia, Patagonia, Scotland, and the Canadian Rockies, Norway and Yellowstone, in winter. The cold or bad weather does not get in her way.

Judy’s presentation, “Elements of Creative Landscape Composition”, is about her approach to the art, covering topics such as her gear and accessories, camera settings, time of day for best results, various composition techniques, and challenges in the field. This presentation is sure to provide useful information for novice and intermediate photographers, and advanced photographers will similarly find useful information about how she sees compositions.

Judy has lived in the Washington, D.C. area most of her life. She retired March 1, 2018, after a long career in the field of human resources management for corporate America. Judy has served in various Board positions for Northern Virginia Photographic Society (NVPS), including President for the 2021-2022 club year. Judy joined the Capital Photography Center as an instructor in 2022.

RPS is looking forward to our January meeting as we begin a new year. We are going to kickoff with Betsy Wilson exploring still life photography from a different perspective. This meeting will be held on January 15 at 7:30 PM on Zoom.

The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86405021230?pwd=NUxIYlNpZE13bWJUak1rZnV5azZjdz09

Meeting ID 864 0502 1230
Passcode 461194

Still Life – Beyond Fruit Bowls and Flowers – Betsy Wilson will explore the world of still life photography through her unique perspective.  A combination of traditional still life subjects, nature’s fascinating still subjects, and a few whimsical and unusual creations, Betsy’s still lifes provide studies in composition and lighting. Unlike landscape or street photography, the photographer is in complete control of subject matter, composition, shape, color, depth of field, lighting and presentation.  The true skill lies in the ability to take something mundane and everyday out of its normal habitat and transform it into something of beauty by using our skills as photographers.

Betsy began learning photography after retiring from a career as a newspaper publisher.  Her husband Jim gave her his hand-me-down camera and a lot of encouragement, and he now says he created a monster.  Her passion for photography includes a wide variety of types including macro, landscape and nature photography.   In addition to being honored as Photographer of the Year Award at the Chester County Camera Club, she has received numerous recognitions for her artistic photography including a Silver Medal awarded at the Wilmington International Exhibition of Photography, and First Place Award in Photography at the Philadelphia Flower Show.  Betsy is an active member of the Chester County Camera Club, and has givennumerous presentations for camera clubs in many states.

The RPS November meeting will be on November 20, 2023 at 7:30 PM via Zoom.  The Zoom code will be distributed closer to the meeting.  Doug is a professional photo educator with wide-ranging experience and expertise.  He will be discussing Low Light and Night Photography.  His bio and some detail on his presentation are below as is his website.  Looking forward to seeing you on Zoom on November 20!

Doug Johnson is a highly respected professional photographer and educator, always sharing the art of photography with his students and colleagues. He has conducted over 150 workshops in some of our world’s most beautiful locations: in the flower fields of Namaqualand, South Africa, the vibrant city of Havana, Cuba, and our country’s world class national parks.

For more than twenty years Doug has educated hundreds of students, from all over the world in the technical and aesthetics of photography through Rocky Mountain School of Photography programs and workshops. He has taught alongside some of the most respected educators in the field including Alison Shaw and Freeman Patterson, as well as good friends, Neil Chaput de Saintonge, Eileen Rafferty, Elizabeth Stone, Tony Rizutto and Tim Cooper. He believes education and truth are the “means to the end” and that good old-fashioned love, peace and fun are the vehicle we use to navigate through our journey.  Doug’s lifelong passion for teaching the technical and aesthetics in the art of photography is a direct reflection of the long term relationships he shares with his students and peers.

https://www.dougjohnsonphotography.com/

Low Light and Night Photography
No need to put the camera away when the sun goes down! In this educational lecture, Doug will explore low light photography and help you create an easy process to capture great night photography, from the neon of downtown to the star-filled sky.

Please join us for the RPS April meeting to be held Monday, April 17, 2023, at 7:30 PM in the Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods.  Janet Sifers, one of our members, will take us into the world of Abstract Photography.  Her work is both exciting and mysterious. This meeting would be interesting to both photographers and painters and all are welcome.

Creating Abstracts with Photography

Most photographers have a specialty like nature, flowers, landscapes, or street photography. Just about any of these images can be raw material for abstracts — both found and created — and lead to an amazing new piece of art. In this presentation, we’ll walk through ways to look for abstracts in the images you’re capturing as well as how to create abstracts from images using tools like Photoshop and Fragment.

Janet Sifers 

Janet is an award-winning fine art photographer and technology marketer from Herndon, VA. She is a member of the League of Reston Artists, the Reston Photographic Society, and Falls Church Arts. 

She is inspired by the amazing diversity of our world, from gorgeous outdoor vistas and colorful plants to the lines and shadows of great architecture. With her images, she reminds us to pause and take in the world’s beauty. 

Connect with her on Instagram (@janet.sifers) and Twitter (@JanetSifers) or visit her website​ ​www.janetsifers.com​ to see and purchase her work.