You never know what is going to happen once your work is on someone’s visual radar. Last October, I met photographer Doug Ness when he took a workshop with me at the Filter Photo Festival. He later went on to share his portfolio with a variety of industry insiders, one of them being Martha Schneider, of Schneider Gallery, during the portfolio reviews.

As Doug recently told me, “Martha, a Chicago gallerist for the last 30 years, was one of the wonderful people who reviewed my work. As a result of that meeting, Martha asked that I display some of my images at a space where she’s responsible for the art, the InterContinental O’Hare Hotel. Happily agreeing, there are currently nine of my images on display there now, and continuing through the next several months, all at the Bistro Museo. All of the prints are 30″x45″ and mounted on plexi. If you’re in Chicago, or even have a long layover at O’Hare, please stop by the hotel and have a look. Art tours are available by contacting the concierge.”

Great news for Doug, who spent 15 years as an Institutional Bond Salesman in New York City and Chicago before discovering his passion for photography in 2008. Since then, he has studied in Chicago, London, Greece, and Montana, where he graduated from the Rocky Mountain School of Photography Career Training Program in 2009. Doug has exhibited on both coasts, and of course, in Chicago.

“Walls of Venice” is a series of images from Venice, Italy that are inspired by both Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. As I lost myself in the streets and alleys of that wonderfully unique and timeless city, I found myself more drawn to photographing what was on the walls than the more typical and iconic sights of the city. Each image is a study in composition and my vision of finding the art in the common, everyday scenes that are so often passed by without our noticing them. I find it exhilarating, this adventure, this searching, this quest for discovering the beauty in the ordinary. Ultimately, the pictures are about texture, line, and form, about re-examining the elements of design in images.