Shutterbugs selected for exhibition at Iowa State Fair

Out of the four Union County shutterbugs that have submitted photos to the Iowa State Fair photography competition, all have been selected for exhibition.

Chuck Spindler, who received first place in the people category, said only 37% of the photos submitted by photographers across the U.S. are selected for exhibition.

“It’s a real challenge to even be exhibited,” he said.

Spindler’s first place photo is titled “Bubble Girl” and features his granddaughter Charlie, who he captured as she played while visiting her in Fort Worth, Texas, last year.

“My wife loves to make bubble solution and they make these huge bubbles. My oldest granddaughter just caught a bubble, and instead of popping it, she caught it and held on to it. She was just kind of waiving it around and I got a number of photos spontaneously,” he said. “I was just taking advantage of a fun event with my grand kids.”

A second photo of Spindler’s was selected for exhibition, along with photos from Rick Gripp, Brenda Strauss and Michelle Jones.

Jones said, after joining the Southwest Shutter Bugs in 2008, she entered photos in to the state fair competition. None were selected at the time.

“It was very discouraging, but it happens to the best of us,” she said. “I try to learn from that. When I look back on those photos, I understand now why they weren’t chosen. The judging is very selective.”

Gripp, who has entered his photos in to the Iowa State Fair competition 12 times said, the more pictures one takes, the better.

“It’s trial and error. If you don’t get it in the first time, just keep submitting,” he said.

Spindler said this year’s panel of judges is made up of three judges – the owner of an Iowa newspaper who is an award-winning photo-journalist, a college professor of photography and a professional photographer.

“It’s just a good, well-rounded group of judges,” he said.

Photographers are limited to four submissions.

“There are a number of categories,” said Spindler. “I think for adult open class, there are 30-something different categories, so there’s lots of latitude about the type of submission, whether it’s color, black and white, and they have an ‘anything goes’ which allows for a little bit more photo editing, but for the others they don’t want you to do a whole lot editing.”

As for editing, Spindler, Strauss, Gripp and Jones said they all strive to rely on their camera settings to capture the best photo possible, focusing on clarity, color and light.

“For me, I want clarity. I want it to be very crisp,” she said. “Right now there are people that do so much editing it looks like a painting. The colors aren’t very natural. I just try to make it look like the colors are natural, the photo to be crisp and I want it to tell a story.”

Strauss said, to stand apart from the competition at the state fair, show the judges something they’ve never seen before.

“I take pictures of eagles, but there are been lots of eagles. There’s lots of roses. Lots of of pictures of things we’ve all seen,” she said. “So they want pictures of things we haven’t seen before, which year after year after year gets pretty tough.”

Learning

Spindler can’t pinpoint when his photography hobby started, but he remembers his dad bringing a 35mm camera on a family vacation to Washington state in 1967.

“He just took some gorgeous pictures and developed slides from that,” he said. “That probably would have been the genesis of my interest in photography.”

His first camera was also a 35mm 27 years ago, but now shoots on a Pentax K-1.

“It’s an art. It takes time to develop it, and it’s a lot of fun when you get the results that you want.”

Spindler contributes his skill to spending time with other community photographers he admires, such as wildlife and landscape photographer Tom Danilovich of Creston, whose captured an image of an eagle now featured in the Creston News Advertiser logo. He said the shutterbug club is also a great resources for budding photographers.

“I knew nothing about the DSLR camera. It was my dream to get one of those,” Strauss said. “The club has done tremendous stuff for teaching, whether its your camera or how to take a picture.”

Gripp said meeting with the club was a great way to learn. He also took courses at Southwestern Community College.

“There are so many good outlets today to learn photography,” said Spindler. “You don’t have to sit in a classroom to do it.”

“I’ve learned just enough to keep going out. Some of it is self-taught because you learn the basics from the club. The members inspire you to go try and do different things and use different modes on your camera. The camera club has been a huge learning tool for me.

To join or learn more about Southwest Iowa Shutterbugs, visit its Facebook page. For results and a full gallery of photographs on display at the 2021 Iowa State Fair, visit iowastatefair.org/participate/competition/results.