PHOTO WORKSHOP WILL BE TAUGHT BY PRO

Photographers will have a chance to improve their picture-taking skills by participating in a Fall Color photography workshop at Trail of Tears State Park on Sept. 21.

Professional photographer Martha McBride of Cape Girardeau will teach this and another workshop on Sept. 28 at Meramec State Park in Franklin County. Both workshops are sponsored by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

McBride, who has been a professional photographer for eight years, said the workshops include how to work on close-ups that can be shot with regular lenses and how to shoot scenic photographs with a special emphasis on perspectives.

Participants should have an intermediate understanding of outdoor photography.

"We want to make sure the person is familiar with his or her camera," McBride said. "They need to know how to put the film in and how the light meter works."

Participants should also bring a 35mm camera, regular outdoor photography gear, a tripod and cable release.

She said the Department of Natural Resources sponsors events like these to get people into the parks. "The parks are prime targets for photographers because of the beautiful scenery and things like wildflowers," McBride said.

McBride, who has taught photography at Cape Girardeau Area Vocational-Technical School for six years, was successful bidder on the DNR. "This was my third year bidding on these workshops," she said.

McBride has taught other workshops: some at the Victorian Inn in Cape Girardeau and one in Hannibal at Mark Twain's workshop.

Some of McBride's photographs have been published in national magazines. She said she mostly does stock photography, which involves taking pictures for textbook, calendars and church book covers.

One of McBride's pictures, the University of Missouri at Columbia, was used in Woman's World magazine to illustrate an article on how to get children ready for college. Organic Gardening magazine has published her pictures of Virginia bluebell flowers taken off Sylvan Lane and pictures of the proper pruning of peach trees taken at Diebold Orchard.

Farm and Ranch Living magazine published a picture of crocus in the snow and Country Magazine used a picture of a bird's nest and a modular cotton bale when it did a special on the state of Missouri.

"It's wonderfully exciting, especially at a newsstand magazine, to see my name under or beside the picture," she said.

She said she was excited when one of her photos recently was used on a calendar. "They chose to use a picture of my daughter, Jennifer, putting aluminum cans in a recyclable bin at the park," she said. "It was nice that the picture was of my daughter and represented a subject so close to my heart environmental protection."

McBride goes through three agencies to get jobs as a stock photographer. "I send the agencies slides and they accept or reject them," she said. "Then companies contract with the agencies for the pictures."

McBride said the agencies send lists to her suggesting picture topics. "You decide what you can and want to do," she said. "For example, `Volcanoes At Night,' I can't do."

She said she got interested in photography while working on her master's degree in instructional media and she was required to take a course on how the 35mm camera and darkroom work.

"I fell in love with it and developed the skill," she said.

McBride said she loves to do macro-photographs, which are extreme close-ups. "For example, I would take a picture of a part of a feather or a section of a flower," she said.

In June she did a workshop on photography for the DNR in Big Oak Tree State Park near East Prairie.

Each workshop is limited to 30 people and costs $10 per participant. For more information and to register for the workshop in Cape Girardeau, call Trail of Tears at 334-1711.