- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS.

Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] Funding for WEDU Arts Plus is provided by the Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

- [Gabe] In this special edition of WEDU Arts Plus, we celebrate West Central Florida photographers.

One photographer uses his talents to boost pet adoptions.

- [Adam] The goal of each photograph is to bring out the pet's personality.

Whenever I show someone their pet's photo, they're like, "Oh my god, that's him.

You captured Fluffy right there."

- [Gabe] A couple finds freedom to travel and share their photography and style.

- [Rebecca] Well, what if we were mobile?

What if we were able to make a gallery that was on wheels and then we could just take it to wherever we wanted to be?

- [Gabe] A nature photographer captures the beauty of the Bradenton Sarasota area.

- [Grant] For me, going back to shooting wildlife, shooting parks, was trying to get back to the beauty of life.

- [Gabe] And photos help foster children find forever homes.

- It's amazing to see what these photographs can do and it really is the power of photography and the power of this partnership that we have.

And of course, the willingness and the bravery of the children involved.

- It's all coming up next on WEDU Arts Plus.

(bright music) Hello, I'm Gabe Ortiz and this is WEDU Arts Plus.

In this special episode, we turn our lens to local stories that celebrate the craft of photography.

In this first segment, Adam Goldberg understands that perfect pet posts and capturing individual personalities are essential for driving adoptions.

His passion for animal welfare is the driving force behind the work in his own company.

(playful music) - So I got started in pet photography because I worked in an animal shelter.

Worked there for two years.

And it was there we actually learned how to work with animals and take photos.

I was doing adoption photos at the Humane Society here in Tampa and just doing it for fun on the weekends.

And they asked me a few months in, "Hey, we love your pictures.

We think the community would love them too.

Will you host a photoshoot fundraising event for us?"

And at that point, this was two years ago, I had no idea how to do that, how to get people to sign up, the marketing behind it.

It went very well, sold out.

Hosted another one, that one sold out.

Hosted another one, that sold out.

Then I started reaching out to other animal shelters in Florida.

Those sold out.

So it took off because they just had a simple request.

And that simple request turned into a career for me.

And since that first event, it was in July of 2016, I've hosted about 200 pet photoshoot fundraisers across the country and we just surpassed about $71,000 in donations.

The goal of each photograph is to bring out the pet's personality.

Whenever I show someone their pet's photo, they're like, "Oh my god, that's him.

You captured fluffy right there."

To get a good picture at a photo session, it's important to have a calm demeanor.

The dog will feed off energy of me, of their owner, then, I make a fool outta myself.

Noises, squeaks, squeals.

I bark sometimes.

And the other thing is treats.

And I use a lot of peanut butter too.

It's important for shelter animals to have great photos because social media nowadays is so prominent and without that, without a good quality picture, they're just gonna get ignored.

Suncoast Animal League gets a lot of interesting animals that have been through turmoil or trouble and I was doing a pet photoshoot fundraiser for them.

And one of the foster parents had Clover and asked if she could bring her invert photoshoot just to document her progress.

- Clover was actually caught in a fire.

Her family was in a shed and the mom, Daisy, pulled the puppies, some of the puppies out and actually she was found laying on top of some of the puppies protecting them.

A few of the puppies had little marks on them, but Clover kind of got the brunt of it where it looked like maybe the one of the pen panels fell on top of her and burned her pretty badly.

When she came to us, her immune system was so compromised that not only was she healing the wounds on the outside from the burns, but she had some immune system issues on the inside that we had to work through as well.

So she's a little fighter.

(bright music) Adam is an amazing photographer.

He does a lot of good things for the rescues in the area.

Suncoast Animal League shared that fundraiser and photos of Clover on their Facebook page.

And through that exposure, Madeira Beach happened to be following our page.

- Our secretary, Tret Eaton saw posts about Clover being up for adoption at Suncoast Animal League.

And Clover is great.

She came by, we liked her story and she's just a real sweetheart.

So we chose her and it's been great.

- With Clover being adopted by the fire department, I was so proud and it was just amazing to see her walk down in the commission meeting with her badge on and to give kisses to her new family and just know what kind of life she's gonna have and the life she's gonna touch.

You know, the kids that see her that have scars and you know, see what a fighter she is and and just how strong she is.

And you know, the help that she's giving to the firefighters.

'Cause they go out and they see some pretty bad stuff, you know, on a daily basis and to come home to her and she's always happy and wagging her tail and happy to see them.

- It makes the station feel more like a home.

The job can be stressful and it's real nice to be able to come back to the station and know Clover will be here.

- I was able to do a photoshoot with her again as a follow-up and the firefighters were there.

It was amazing.

We did some photos in front of the truck and it was awesome.

Clover is the best dog for what she's doing now.

- We plan to involve her in like public education and teach-ins and stuff like that and like fire safety programs that we do with the schools.

And so she will have a job stop.

Stop, drop.

- I have a project called the Shelter Pet Cutout Project.

And the idea behind that is to put these life-size pet cutouts at community businesses.

And they wear a tag that says, "This dog represents the hundreds of shelter animals available for adoption on a daily basis."

And the reason for that is I wanted to put my photography out there but also put it in places where people don't expect it.

Not everyone's going to the shelter, not everyone's going to the shelter website.

For this first round of cutouts, we did six dogs and they've all been adopted.

So I started the pit bull picture project, which uses my style and photography, which is the goofy, the silly, the funny side, and portrays pit bulls in a positive light to inspire more pet adoptions.

So the idea of the project is to show the goofy and lovable side to dispel some of the myths.

And it actually got national attention.

It was in HuffPost and People Magazine.

Through the projects that I'm working on, getting extra attention to pit bulls or shelter animals as I'm doing my job.

I adopted my dog Rigby when I worked at the animal shelter and it was the best day of my life when I rescued him and brought him home.

He was four months old at the time.

The funny thing is I never had a dog growing up so I didn't really know how to cure for a dog.

So Rigby kinda taught me.

(playful music) Knowing that I'm contributing to people finding family members in the furry variety is so heartwarming to me 'cause I'm making a difference.

(playful music) - To learn more, go to agoldphoto.com.

Tampa residents, Matt Larson and Rebecca Sexton Larson wanted a way to travel, practice photography and showcase their work.

The answer, a 23-foot travel trailer dubbed Boxfotos Airstream.

(relaxing music) - Becky and Matt are an amazing team.

They compliment one another so well.

They go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I can't imagine one without the other.

They clearly appreciate each other's gifts and strengths.

They fill out the picture more.

It would be a black and white experience with one of them.

It's full color, technicolor with both of them.

- Matt and Becky were offering a workshop on pinhole photography.

And Becky being a conceptual photographer, I was very excited to take a class from her.

The pinhole photography class was phenomenal.

I learned a lot about how to do it.

I've never done it before.

And to see their dark room and to work in that was really fun.

And to work outside with their airstream and the different props that they had was also a lot of fun.

The whole experience was really amazing to take that class with them and it really helped me to carve out some time to be able to make art, which I really appreciated.

And to make art and learn not just how to, from a pinhole perspective, but to do it from working artists.

(bright music) - Matt and I for a long time, knew that we wanted to kind of set up up a gallery or someplace where we could hold classes and share our work, but we never could figure out where we wanted to do that.

We had looked at buildings in Tampa, we couldn't find one we really liked in Tampa and we had traveled to surrounding other southern states and we couldn't really find one that really, you know, struck us.

So all of a sudden, we're like, "Well what if we were mobile?

What if we were able to make a gallery that was on wheels and then we could just take it to wherever we wanted to be?"

- And then we kind of thought about it.

And about a couple days later, Rebecca starts chirping and, "Well, what if it was an airstream?"

And I'm like, "Well we can't afford an Airstream."

And then the idea just grew.

So the first thing we did was built a website.

We called it Boxfotos out of pinhole cameras being a box and photography, so hence Boxfotos.

And every time we went hiking, we just posted under Boxfotos.

We started another Facebook account, another Instagram count.

It kinda caught on.

Everyone kind of thought we had an Airstream.

And it's one of those things where social media made something bigger than what it really was.

But we built our business out of being Boxfotos Airstream before we had the Airstream.

And then we finally got it.

(bright music) The classes really started out of, you know, again, trying to sell your own work, trying to now make Airstream payments.

- When we first got the Airstream, we knew we wanted to do some sort of classes and we have the TV in here and we have the nice bench seat, we can host about six people.

So we started looking at different things that would be able to do in a fairly easy manner.

And the nice thing about historic processes is you don't need complete dark rooms all the time to do them like cyanotypes and the salt printing and stuff.

So they afforded us the ability to make it mobile with those kind of classes.

- And the easiest thing I thought would be an iPhone class because everybody uses it.

But in reality, it's probably one of the harder classes to teach.

Because first thing I did before I started teaching the iPhone class, I went to the Apple store and kind of hovered around the table as they taught the iPhone class.

Then I realized people don't know they even have a contacts in their phone.

Some people only use their iPhone as a phone.

Some people only use our iPhone as a camera.

So no one really used the tool as it was really meant to be in everything.

And we do, both of us, do it really well.

- Matt and Becky offer a program that's available to people of any skill level of any fitness level.

We have hiked, sorry, I won't even call it hike.

We have strolled or casually walked through the woods together at a pace that is very accessible.

They're constantly coaching, constantly teaching, giving you the information that you need to enhance your shots.

They observe how you're doing it.

They offer feedback right then.

It's wonderful.

(bright music) - Matt and Becky are some of my most favorite people, especially as artists.

To have a couple who's who make art together is something that I appreciate 'cause my husband is also an artist.

- Well my joke was, this is the only thing I really got outta college was I met my wife.

- Matt and I met at USF at school and we met in photojournalism.

And we actually met with him insulting my work during the critique.

Matt stood up and said, "Just go easy on her.

She's an art major."

And so he insulted me was the very first thing he did.

- And I went home and told my sister, "I met my wife to be" way before he even asked her out on the date.

- I think an important part of us being able to work together is way able to take criticism.

Our work is very different and we literally can be standing back to back and we will shoot it in a different eye.

So even though we work together, we still have a different vision.

I think mines tend to be more storytelling, his tend to be more documentary.

- Between Rebecca's work and my work, she approaches it strictly from a creative standpoint.

I still approach everything from a commercial standpoint.

I look at everything very technical.

I think it's incredible because we're two people with two different strong suits and I think the students just get two instructors for the price of one, which you don't get anywhere else.

- There's so much more to it.

And while Matt is masterful and Becky is masterful at creating an emotion, I'm still trying to like understand how to do the technical piece as well as the emotional piece and bring it all together and their voices are in my head.

When I take a good picture, sometimes, I'll email it to them.

I'm like, "Look at this, what do you think?"

And they're very encouraging and they continue to provide support beyond the class.

- The future, what I wanna do is I wanna go travel cross country, going from art center to museums and just tying into their exhibitions, whether it's historic process, iconography, digital street photography, - The idea of being able to travel with them on the trips that they go to is something that I'm looking forward to joining.

- See more at instagram.com/boxfotos.

After decades of shooting pictures for the Bradenton Herald, photographer Grant Jefferies is turning his focus to nature.

Visit Jefferies at Al Studio and Art Gallery on Anna Maria Island where he showcases his work.

(playful music) - How do I get some of these pictures?

I get in the water.

Yeah, you've gotta stick the tripod in the water.

Yes, you've gotta get out and get in waist deep water and hope that you'll drop something.

Grab the mosquito spray before I go and I have mosquito spray in my camera bag.

For me, it's the only way to really get some of these photos.

My name is Grant Jefferies.

I'm a photographer here in Bradenton and I've been working for a newspaper for 30 years and I have started a new chapter in my life and doing nature and landscape, seascape photography.

I worked for the Bradenton Herald, so McClatchy newspaper.

I was there for 30 years.

And I just retired as chief photographer.

And I shot everything from babies to fires to shootings, I've done it all, you know.

I got into photography probably in a couple of ways.

My mom and dad always had cameras torturing us as kids to, you know, doing the family photo thing.

And I had a 110 little Instamatic camera, I guess was one of my first cameras.

And then a friend of mine got a real camera.

And I am wowed.

So I actually saved up my money and got a real 35-millimeter camera with a 50-millimeter lens on it.

And I was just as happy as I could be.

I went out and shot birds and, you know, everything could find.

The birds were this big though because of the 50-millimeter lens, but it didn't matter.

I just enjoyed it.

And it progressed from there.

(playful music) I got my first newspaper job in North Carolina.

I was out shooting, believe it or not, a fire on a railroad track.

And the editor of the local newspaper was also out there at the same time and he forgot his lens.

He didn't have the right camera lens.

He saw me shooting pictures, he didn't know who I was.

He came over and asked to borrow my lens.

And so I loaned him my lens and we started talking and this very kind gentleman, Bob Allen.

So he eventually offered me a job and that was my break into the newspaper.

And it's been in my blood ever since.

Like to travel a lot of places, meet a lot of people, see a lot of things that I never thought I would see.

It was a good career and it was time to change gears.

It was time to start a new chapter.

(bright music) Now it's a little bit different because I don't have somebody assigning me.

I don't have the editor telling me what to do.

I don't have the story.

So now I've gotta be my own editor.

I've gotta be my own assigner.

It's different.

It's different.

'Cause I don't have to answer to anybody except myself.

And I'm pretty critical.

One thing I do do, I look at the weather, I look and see if there are fronts coming through.

If there's gonna be rain, if there's gonna be anything that I should take advantage of.

'Cause as you know, in Florida, weather changes like crazy, but that change sometimes can offer you some of the best photographs that you can take.

There's clouds, there's rain, there's wind.

And to try to capture that moment is very rewarding.

This is a fast-growing area.

The whole west coast of Florida, Manatee County, Tampa Bay area is just exploding.

And we're losing a lot of our woods, our areas that we can just walk through and enjoy.

And capturing the beauty of this hopefully will inspire others to preserve it and enjoy it for years to come.

(calm music) As a journalist, you capture the joys, the thrill of life, and there's also the darker side.

And that was getting to me, so I need to change.

For me, going back to shooting wildlife, shooting parks, was trying to get back to the beauty of life, trying to get back into when I laid my head down at night, the images I saw were relaxing.

They were good.

- To see more, visit grantjefferiesphotography.com.

It's the art of capturing a child's spirit, photographing a moment in the emotional life of a foster child.

The Heart Gallery of Tampa uses evocative photos to match waiting children with adoptive parents.

(bright music) - [Jesse] I think that there's an art to taking a heart gallery photo.

- You can look at a photograph and think, "Wow, it looks like a great kid."

- The idea of the photographs are to capture the spirit of a child.

- I just thought, "Well, if I try being myself, maybe something good would happen."

- The mission of the children's board at Heart Gallery Tampa is to raise awareness of Tampa's waiting foster children, engage the community in their welfare and to secure permanent loving adoptive families.

Children that are involved in the Heart Gallery program, they're actually three times as likely to become adopted.

When you see photographs of actual children that are living right here in Tampa, it kind of clicks something in your brain.

And I think what it has done most successfully is planted the seed of adoption, the idea of adoption for people who might not have considered it for themselves.

- I had tried to have children my whole life and was told that I couldn't.

I decided to adopt from foster care because I had heard a statistic about how many children were waiting just here in our county.

And I prayed about it and I just knew.

I knew that my calling was to adopt from foster care.

- I've been in like the foster care for like, a very long time now.

And now it's a time where I can leave and be with somebody that I love.

- [Jesse] Hillsborough County has about 200 to 400 children in the foster care system at any given time.

And then we feature between 100 and 115 children in the Heart Gallery.

All of our heart gallery photographers are volunteers.

- My day job is working for the Tampa Bay Times.

I'm a photojournalist there.

I cover a lot of sports.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the fall.

It's kinda football takes over my life, but I'm kind of a jack of all trades.

I shoot a little bit of everything.

- Our heart gallery photographers pretty much come from all walks of life.

They have various amounts of experience and one of the things that I love so much about our finished exhibits is that they represent so many different photographic styles.

- Photographing for the heart gallery is a different process than typical photojournalism.

Letting the situation evolve in front of you and then trying to document that and distill it down into one image.

This is a little bit different because it's more of a relationship between you and the kid that you're photographing.

And so it's almost, it's a collaborative process.

They have to participate as well.

It's not about me and the camera, it's about them and us making the best photo possible.

- It really requires a lot of the photographer to get the child to warm up to them and to really get candid shots as much as possible.

We really try not to go for your school photo, cheesy smile.

We get a lot of those and we take those and then we just kinda work and work until we get something that feels very genuine.

- Well, often a photoshoot is kind of a process, you know.

It is kind of like putting layers of paint on canvas.

You know, it builds as you go.

Every kid is different and so you kinda just take that into account often.

I just try to find out something, what do they like to do?

And make it about them and what they enjoy in life and just try to have, make a fun moment - When you're engaged with a kid and they get comfortable with you, you know when it's real and you know when you just hope that composition and lighting and focus is all happening and that's all gonna work with you.

But you know those magical moments - For me, it's about seeing life in this child.

You know, their smile, their laugh.

Artistically, I try to show that energy of youth.

I wanna capture their spirit in a way that you can look at a photograph and think, "Wow, it looks like a great kid."

- It's amazing to see what these photographs can do and it really is the power of photography and the power of this partnership that we have.

And of course, the willingness and the bravery of the children involved.

- It's really cool.

It's that you have someone that you know that will love you no matter what.

That you have like, somebody that wants to take care of you when you didn't have as many people that did before.

- The thought of having one of my photographs impact a child's life in that way is very humbling.

Because that is such a huge change in their life.

And as a photojournalist, as a photographer, you hope to invoke change either in the world or in a life.

- Each of the photographs represents a great potential for a positive outcome because once you meet these kids and those barriers break down, you just can't help but fall in love.

And it happens all the time.

It's like the magic of the heart gallery that you'll see this face and suddenly, people will tell you that they know that that's their child.

I see it happen all the time.

- To find out more, visit heartgallerytampa.org.

And that wraps it up for this edition of WEDU Arts Plus.

For more arts and culture, visit wedu.org/artsplus.

Until next time, I'm Gabe Ortiz.

Thanks for watching.

(excited music) - [Announcer] Funding for WEDU Arts Plus is provided by the Community Foundation Tampa Bay.

(dramatic music)