Virtual Monthly Presenter’s Meeting
Our featured speakers are typically accomplished photographers from throughout the US and beyond. The monthly meetings also include a “photo challenge” segment, in which all current PPF members are invited to submit photos that reflect a specific theme. These meetings are the Third Monday of the month and open to the public.
If you are not a member, but would like to learn more about meetings, sign up for our newsletter using the form at the bottom of the page.
FEATURED SPEAKER: Shelley Vandergrift | The Evolution of an Expressive Photographer: My Journey as a Creative
What happens when a photographer stops recording what she sees and starts expressing what she imagines? Santa Fe photographer and instructor Shelley Vandegrift shares her path from traditional landscape and wildlife photography to the surreal world of infrared, and on to dreamlike composites and bold abstraction. Through her images, explorations of her artistic path, and candid reflections on doubt, discovery, and the question "Is that still photography?", Shelley takes you on her journey learning how the camera can gather ingredients and the digital darkroom can turn them into dreams. Whether you love representational work or feel drawn toward something more personal, you'll leave with fresh inspiration.
ABOUT: Shelley Vandergrift is a digital artist, photographer, and educator whose work deliberately disrupts reality — transforming familiar scenes into something unexpected, otherworldly, and deeply personal. Her imagery spans digital infrared, expressive composites, and painterly interpretations of the world, always pushing the boundaries of what photography can be.
Her love of photography began in childhood and grew into a lifelong exploration of light, texture, mood, and technical artistry. That spirit of exploration never stops: Shelley is constantly experimenting with new techniques in Photoshop, Lightroom, and mobile editing apps, always giving herself permission to play, challenge assumptions, and see the world differently.
In 2020, Shelley co-authored Infrared Photography: Digital Techniques for Artistic Images (Amherst Media) with her artistic mentor and longtime teaching partner Laurie Klein. Together, as the Invisible Story Team, they spent a decade teaching digital infrared photography and post-processing to photographers around the world.
As an educator, Shelley brings that same sense of discovery into the classroom. She leads workshops and online courses for Santa Fe Workshops, Maine Media Workshops, the LA Center of Photography, and Camversations UK — helping photographers at every level use digital tools to bring their unique visions to life.
Her most recent workshops focus on expressive digital processing, guiding participants to move beyond documentation and into interpretation — using their images as a starting point for something that feels truer than reality itself. Whether exploring infrared landscapes, imaginative composites, or pure abstraction, Shelley believes photography is about more than capturing a scene. It's about disrupting what we think we see, and creating a view of the world that couldn't exist any other way.
PPF 15-minute member speaker:
JoAnn Radicchi | The World Through My Lens Travels, Discoveries, and a Life in Photography
My favorite thing to do is to get in a car or a boat or a plane or a train or a bus and go somewhere I’ve never been before. In 1979-80 I quit my teaching job here in Portland, got a master’s degree, got married, and moved to Kathmandu to teach at the international school there. Until that time, I’d been capturing family moments with whatever Instamatic happened to be at hand. But knowing that I’d be seeing beautiful and interesting sights, I stopped in Hong Kong on the way and bought a Pentax ME Super---which I had absolutely no idea how to use.
That was the beginning of documenting my journeys with a camera. My career, parenthood, and life as a soccer mom all up and down the East Coast often interfered. Retirement brought a new determination to learn more about photography.
Luckily, workshops, mentors, and YouTube are all available. So I keep traveling. And taking pictures. And learning.
