Susan Tiffen said she doesn’t get to travel much, so she takes a lot of photographs of Long Island scenes, trying to capture the beauty in her own community.
“I’ve been taking pictures of these Long Island scenes for the last 10 years,” she said. “I like to take an ordinary scene and make it unique.”
The Dolphin Bookshop and Cafe in Port Washington has named Tiffen its artist of the month for August.
The Roslyn Heights resident will have 20 photos on display starting on Aug.6 with the grand-opening ceremony.
“I am very grateful for the Dolphin to allow me to do this,” she said. “Anything I can do to help promote a local business, I will do. I hope my photos bring people into the Dolphin.”
When shooting on Long Island, Tiffen, who went to school for fine art, said she takes pictures of anything that catches her eye.
“A lot of the time, I take pictures of flowers that I try and present in a unique way,” she said. “A lot of the photos are of things that are meaningful to people on Long Island.”
Tiffen said she will display a variety of photos at Dolphin, including Long Island scenes, flower displays and photos of beaches around Long Island.
“They will be Long Island themed,” she said. “And many of them are my favorite places, and some of them no longer exist.”
With a background in fine art, Tiffen said, her style changed when she learned computer graphics and when the digital camera “brought everything together.”
She said she calls herself a fine art photographer, because she has “no problem altering the images or changing the color.
“It gives it more of a mood than it originally had,” she said.
Photography runs in Tiffen’s family.
Her father, Sol, along with his two brothers, Nat and Leo, started Tiffen, a manufacturer of imaging accessories for professional imaging, which also works with the motion picture and broadcast television industries.
“My father always said photography is in my blood,” Tiffen said.
Tiffen’s work has been displayed on Long Island before, she said, including in Manhasset library shows, at the Sid Jacobsen JCC in Greenvale and in Freeport.
“It’s very exciting to me,” she said. “I hope people will enjoy it.
Tiffen said she is also very active in many of the photography clubs on Long Island, including the Long Island Center of Photography, the Photography Club of Long Island and others.
She has also won awards from the Manhasset Art Association
Using Long Island as her hunting ground for photos, Tiffen likes to shoot scenes at local parks, especially Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park in Oyster Bay, where she can shoot scenes and flowers.
“It’s really whatever catches my eye,” she said.
