UB photographer’s perspective gaining wider audience

University Communications photographer Douglas Levere has been documenting life at UB for years — first as a UB undergraduate interning in University Publications and more recently as photo and video manager in University Communications.

And now his perspective on life at UB is gaining a much wider audience.

Levere’s photographs have consistently placed in the Top 10 — as high as No. 8 — in the Monthly Image Competition (MIC) sponsored by the University Photographers Association of America (UPAA). MIC began in 2004 as a friendly competition through which UPAA members could share their photographs, but has grown over the years to become a way of fostering creative ideas and seeing what others in the profession are doing.

Images are judged by fellow university and college photographers, so “winning participants know their images are appreciated and valued by their counterparts at some of the best college and universities around the world,” says UPAA President Glenn Carpenter.

The MIC takes place during each academic year, from August through June. Photographers can enter a maximum of four images each month in a variety of categories. Scores from the monthly competitions are added together to determine an overall winner, who is recognized at UPAA’s annual symposium in June.

A native of Roslyn Heights on Long Island, Levere received a BA in design studies — a planned special major from the School of Architecture and Planning — in 1989. He launched his photographic career in New York City, working for advertising, corporate and editorial clients. His images have appeared in Newsweek, People, Business Week, Life, The New York Times, Forbes and Fortune, among others.

From 1997-2002, he revisited sites in New York City originally documented by photographer Bernice Abbott in the 1930s, using the same 8x10 Century Universal camera and shooting at the same time of day and year. The subsequent book, “New York Changing,” was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2004, and an exhibition of photographs was held in 2005 at the Museum of the City of New York. Both the book and exhibit show the Abbott and Levere photos side by side.

Levere moved back to Buffalo in 2005 and joined Creative Services — now University Communications — as a full-time photographer in 2009. In addition to his work at UB, Levere is also president of Print Collection Inc., a web-based gallery selling fine art prints of commissioned, licensed and public domain imagery.

And in his spare time on winter nights, he often can be found photographing snowflakes in the dark outside his garage. That work has been published in The New Yorker, The Buffalo News and in other blogs and online publications. The first public exhibition of his snowflake photography was shown in 2015 at CEPA Gallery.

Levere is continually expanding his photographic skills, earning a drone Night Authorization FAA certification that enables him to take drone images at dusk and at night. “It opens the campuses to a whole new window of opportunity for photography,” he says.

He also has been using a creative lens adaptor, which fits between the lens and the subject, obscuring, blurring or flaring the images and making for “compelling, in-camera effects,” he explains.

“I love that my photography work helps our students, faculty, staff and alumni tell their UB stories,” Levere says. “Every day when I go to work, I am challenged, meeting different educators and students, and helping them visualize a creative record of their work. It’s very satisfying.”

He says that with so much of his work supporting the university’s research enterprise, “it’s been a goal of mine to celebrate the images that come out of our labs, to get researchers together talking about their work and their ideas around art.”

He says he had been sharing the idea of an event celebrating “The Art of Research” with administrators for about 14 years; the idea came to fruition this past semester as an annual event produced by the Graduate School. Levere served as a member of the event’s steering committee.

“It has become a wonderful way for graduate students to celebrate their research and interact with members of the university and community,” he says.