BILOXI, Mississippi --- Bye-bye, Andy Warhol. Sayonara, Jun Kaneko. Farewell, Richmond Barthé and Helene Fielder.

The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art (www.georgeohr.org) set the bar awfully high with its opening exhibits, which until recently occupied the galleries since the grand opening of Phase I of the $35 million museum in November 2010: prints by Pop artist Andy Warhol; enormous ceramic heads by Kaneko; sculptures by Barthé, a native of Bay St. Louis, Miss.; and abstract ceramic artwork by Mississippi artist Helene Fielder.

Seven months and more than 16,000 visitors later, the museum took those exhibits down and packed them for shipping. Thus began the process of bringing three compelling new exhibits to the museum. (See information box.

I create lots of my images against a solid black background, and am frequently asked how I get the background so black. Lighting is one of the elements, and the material used for the background is the other. For lighting information, I'll recommend taking a class or getting information from one of the  many available online forums for professional photographers. Most importantly, you'll want to avoid shining your lights directly at the background. 

There are a lot of different background materials one can use when creating photos with a solid black background. I've tried several options, and have found one in particular that is my favorite. I like the "photo black" background that I bought from Denny. Of the options I've tried, it does the best job of absorbing the light. Denny offers frequently sales on this background, when you can buy it for half-price. They currently have a sale running through midnight 2/19/09. You can go to their website www.dennymfg.com to sign up for their e-mail newsletter and they'll notify you of upcoming specials....

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In keeping track at how enthusiasts are progressing with their koi-keeping, they take pictures of their koi. They use koi fish pictures as tools as part of taking care of them. This is to document their growth and changes.

There are also commercial sellers and breeders who do koi photography to post the beauty of these wonderful creatures over the internet to sell it.

These pictures of koi fish are normally taken with the fish in the pond. The difficulty there is that the photographer will have to find a good angle or wait for the koi to come up on the surface. There are photographers who take picture by transferring the fish to a plastic bowl. This is done to minimize the movement of the fish to capture the beautiful angles of the fish.

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