Every camera bag should have a lens cleaning cloth, an extra memory card and most important, an extra battery. Additionally, the accessories listed below might come in handy.

 A clear glass filter designed to protect your front lens element from scratches or other damage. Get one for each lens and leave it on, unless you're using a different filter. No stacking filters.

Sunglasses for your lenses. Use on a bright sunny day to help increase saturation and contrast. Also use to remove glare on water, windows and foliage.

When you need a slow shutter speed in daylight, this filter helps prevent overexposure.
Perfect for photographing waterfalls in daylight.

Shoot in the rain or snow and use a rain sleeve to protect your camera and lens.

If you struggle to see your LCD screen when you're shooing outdoors on a sunny day, try one of these loupes. 

Visit their website at
https://www.hoodmanusa.com/HoodLoupes-s/128.htm

Telephoto, wide angle, fish eye and macro are some of our favorites. They also have filters for smartphones.

Visit their website at
https://www.shopmoment.com/shop/categories/all?collection=photographer-collection

When your fingers are too big for editing on your phone, a stylus is a the way to go.

Visit their website at
https://tenonedesign.com/pogo.php

July 14, 2024-January 12, 2025 

In 1948 Gordon Parks published Camera Portraits: The Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture, a book of forty-four pictures and text that proposed a new way of creating photographic portraits. Unlike earlier photographers who worked within the safe and controlled confines of a studio when making their portraits, Parks urged photographers to take their cameras out into the world where their subjects lived and worked.

Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection examines how Parks applied these principles to his portraits made from the early 1940s to the 1970s. It includes pictures of some of the most celebrated figures of the time

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/exhibitions/museum-exhibitions/gordon-parks-camera-portraits-from-the-corcoran-collection

Ongoing VIRTUAL exhibit

"Sailors and Daughters" reveals the expansive maritime societies of Zanzibar, the east African coast, and beyond. From the 1840s, cameras traced the international migrations of traders, sailors, sons, and daughters through Indian Ocean ports, continuing trade that dates back over five millennia. East African cities flourished as hubs of both land and sea trade routes, which extended to the central African interior, Horn of Africa, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean islands, western India and the Far East.

The region’s intercultural ethos generated a multitude of encounters between subjects, photographers, and the global audiences who viewed the resulting images. By gathering images from scarce and little-known collections of early photographs, lithographs, postcards, and private albums, this exhibition focuses attention on a diverse cross-section of the region’s people and their cosmopolitan cities by the sea. It serves as a starting point for a larger photographic and creative visual history of the prosperous and diverse communities of the Indian Ocean world.

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
950 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20560
http://indian-ocean.africa.si.edu/

Ongoing VIRTUAL exhibit

NOT AN OSTRICH: & OTHER IMAGES FROM AMERICA’S LIBRARY, organized by the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles and drawn from the photography collections of the Library of Congress, presents a taste of this institution’s spectacular holdings of more than 14 million photographs. Selected images reproduced for this online exhibition were made between 1839 and today. They trace the evolution of photography, from daguerreotypes and other early processes to contemporary digital technology.

Library of Congress
10 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20540
Southwest Gallery, Thomas Jefferson Building
https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/images-from-americas-library/about-this-exhibition/

Ongoing VIRTUAL exhibit

An icon in modern photography, Mary Ellen Mark (1940 - 2015) documented people around the world who might otherwise be unknown or forgotten.  From street children in Seattle to circus performers in India, Mark captured the lives and stories of individuals with empathy, humor and candor.  The exhibition includes photographs from some of the artist's best-known series that depict girls and young women, reflecting Mark's wonderous and uncanny vision of girlhood.

National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave NW
Washington, DC 20005
https://nmwa.org/whats-on/exhibitions/online/mary-ellen-mark-girlhood/

April 26, 2024 - February 23, 2025

Through portraiture and biography, “Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900 – 1939” illuminates the accomplishments of sixty convention-defying women who crossed the Atlantic to pursue personal and professional aspirations in the vibrant cultural milieu of Paris.

National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets NW
Washington, DC 20001
https://npg.si.edu/exhibition/brilliant-exiles-american-women-paris-1900-%E2%80%93-1939-april-26-2024-%E2%80%93-feb-23-2025

September 9, 2024 – January 20, 2025

Late 19th-century Paris witnessed profound social, cultural, and physical change. Political and military clashes led to widespread destruction in the city. At the same time, industrialization and new technologies like the railway altered residents’ experience of urban space. Women were increasingly present in public life, and tourism was expanding. The city where the impressionists lived and worked was in flux. Artists reacted to this moment in multiple ways: some sought refuge in tradition, while others embraced new ways of seeing.

This selection of approximately 40 photographs and prints from the National Gallery of Art Library shows us the world of the artists and artworks on view in Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment. These archival objects provide glimpses of a city and an art market on the cusp of modernity.

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Library Atrium
https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2024/library-impressionists-paris.html

October 6, 2024 – April 6, 2025

See how documentary photography transformed during the 1970s.

Featuring some 100 works by more than 80 artists, The ʼ70s Lens examines how photographers reinvented documentary practice during this radical shift in American life. Mikki Ferrill and Frank Espada used the camera to create complex portraits of their communities. Tseng Kwong Chi and Susan Hiller demonstrated photography’s role in the development of performance and conceptual art. With pictures of suburban sprawl, artists like Lewis Baltz and Joe Deal challenged popular ideas of nature as pristine. And Michael Jang and Joanne Leonard made interior views that examine the social landscape of domestic spaces

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2024/70s-lens-documentary-photography.html

November 2 & 3, 2024 

Mid-Atlantic Photo Visions (MAPV) is returning to an in-person event after 4 years! Come together to collaborate, socialize, and learn in all areas of photography.

Offering an inspiring lineup of renown speakers with exciting presentations on a wide variety of topics from landscape to portraiture to architecture and everything in between.

Bring your camera and enjoy any of the 35 Hands On Workshops, Photo Shoots and 1-on-1 sessions.

Also at the event are camera manufacturer reps, photography vendors, and a local camera store open for business.

To top it all off, visitors can view the 500+ juried photos on exhibit from club members and students from area schools.

George Mason Center for Performing Arts in Manassas, VA
https://midatlanticphotovisions.org/mapv-back-in-person-at-the-hylton-center-november-2-3-2024/