Photography – a2photographic.com

Ann Arbor Photographic Arts

A Staircase of Creative Expression

Photo Studies with our Digital Cameras

Bikein Ann Arbor Midpoint | Lowlight photoshoot with the Panasonic Lumix FZ2500

A spontaneous pop-up photo shoot happened when photographer Evans Koukios encountered A2 bikers at their midpoint stop on their last Friday of the month Bikeinannarbor. It was late evening at Mary Beth Doyle Park, known for its urban wetland environment.

Click to view the youtube video shot with a Lumix Panasonic FZ2500 bridge camera in 4K and converted to slow motion in post. The original soundtrack is used to present the park’s evening audio ambiance.

Photo study galleries were also created that show a group picture captured with the FZ2500’s built in flash, a potpourri gallery of stills, two galleries of a2photographic’s “photodesigns”, animated video slideshows and a gallery of “snaps” or frame extractions from the 4K footage—all to show the creative efforts that Ann Arbor Photographic Arts can bring to its artistic portfolio.

Explore it all by clicking the slideshow or the button below. Leave your comments in the gallery guestbooks and buy from our photo product shopping galleries. Click on!

The Electric Bolt 2019 - Pressing the Panasonic FZ2500 in the Cure for ALS

We at Ann Arbor Photographic Arts celebrated a one year milestone as our photo coverage of the Ann Arbor Electric Bolt Race last year was the impetus for creating our a2photographic.com website. This year we returned to the photo site of our maiden web voyage and created a new video slideshow, “Pressing the FZ2500 Finish Line Camera” at this year’s Electric Bolt on July 28, 2019.

The play on the word “pressing” is an understatement, as this photographic assignment has a continuous stream of runners approaching from a distance and heading right at the camera. Bands of light streak across the path from the east, and the camera is “pressed” into keeping zoom, focus and exposure at a blistering pace, as the goal is to capture all of the individual finish line photo stories.

The first video slideshow is running at a pace of 6 high resolution shots a second, about the same burst rate of the Panasonic Lumix FZ2500 camera. It is fast action sports photography, a study in the capabilities of this powerful bridge zoom camera.

The second video slideshow, “Photo Story at the Finish Line” is more measured at 148 high res photos and feeds into the PHOTO BOOKS we created especially for this year’s run. Enjoy the drama at the finish line with this poignant selection of images.

Please share your stories about this photography by clicking below and signing the gallery guestbook. Create your own PHOTO STORY BOOK by picking your favorite pictures. A2photographic.com is the place for 2019 Electric Bolt photography. Click below for our galleries.

On Nature's Trail - A Decade of Photo Birding In and Around Ann Arbor

Neighbors and friends from Cincinnati, Toni and Marshall Wilson came to Ann Arbor yesterday for a long overdue reunion of our two families. Now teaching bio and photo chemistry at Bowling Green State University, Marshall has also built an incredible database of 25000 birds. Spurred by their upcoming visit, Evans did a search in his online google photo albums for the term “birds”. However the graphical and text algorithm worked, it selected 6500 images our of tens of thousands. These were downloaded and then half were selected and then uploaded today to a2photographic’s zenfolio photo galleries.

This project revealed a host of cameras including early Canon, Kodak, and Fuji models; a Sony line of HX100, HX200, Alpha SLT A57 and A65 cameras, and the Panasonic Lumix line of the FZ200, FZ1000 and the FZ2500. There were a host of environments, too, throughout nearly a decade of photo birding in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County parks, backyards, the Detroit and Indianapolis zoos, the Great Lakes National Cemetery, nature photography workshops and the very special bird sanctuary at the Leslie Science Center here in Ann Arbor. So thanks Marshall and Toni for the inspiration to go out on the birding trail once again and relive my photo adventures of the past decade.

For all other photo birders, be sure to go to the galleries, see the trials and tribulations of bird photography, sign into the guestbook and please leave your own birding adventure stories, too. More to come. This is but “day one” of this new project.

Take care,

Evans Koukios, Ann Arbor Photographic Arts, June 16, 2019

On A Photoshoot at the Lincoln Street Art Park Near Wayne State University

Detroit is a creative place for artists and Ann Arbor Photographic Arts has significant roots there. Co-founder of the company, Maria Koukios, got her BFA Degree in Photography from Wayne. Now in the professional world, she is assisting one of her former teachers. Deborah Kingery, in developing curriculum materials for a new online “Introduction to Photography” course being offered during the Spring and Summer semesters.

To introduce her students to the wonders of photography and the operation of DSLR cameras, Deborah took Maria and her photographer dad Evans (see bios below), to Lincoln Street Art Park just north of Warren off Trumbull. There are no shortage of pictures on the web taken at the park and a2photographic.com just contributed more, with the purpose of aiding photographic and fine art instruction.

There are galleries showing the relationship of Depth of Field and lens F stop, motion blur with slow shutter speeds, frame grabs from 4K video, post processing for fine art effect, perspective and leading lines, photo journalistic coverage of a location with their Leica super zoom lenses and Panasonic Lumix cameras.

Explore the galleries at our webstore by clicking on one of the slideshows or the button below.

McMillan's Chernobyl - Photography Exhibition at Oakland University Curated by Claude Baillargeon

Since 1994, university teacher and photographer David McMillan revisited the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine. His photography intimately and artistically captured the deserted region of our planet contaminated by deadly radiation, its cultural heritage in decay, and nature’s relentless reclaiming of its habitats. McMillan began his career as a painter and landscape photographer before embarking on this major photographic project. It was brought to exhibit status by Curator Claude Baillargeon, Professor of Art History at Oakland University and expert in exploring the history of the nuclear age.

Ann Arbor Photographic Arts video covered the curator’s talk on March 29, 2019, purchased the newly published book of more than 200 images in McMillan’s project (including an essay by Baillargeon), and revisited the gallery to make a journalistic record. This is an important story for photographers in search of subjects and on the curator’s craft of gallery exhibition. It even inspired A2’s documentary video with a photographic slideshow; and a new collection of A2’s unique “photodesign art”, created with a new experimental technique. You’ll recognize faculty from Oakland University, CCS, Wayne State, Toledo University, Adrian College and more. Click to view the video documentary and for our gallery albums.