Category: Events

[audio:corona park.mp3]

I’m happy to announce that three of my images were selected for the online exhibit The Nocturnes 2008, curated by the landscapist, Mark Hobson. If you dabble in night photography or are out there every full moon, chances are that you have heard of the nocturnes website. Spearheaded by Tim Baskerville, the nocturnes is an invaluable resource for all your night photography questions. I have constantly referred to the resources page to find great tips for shooting in the dark and I really enjoy building my book collection around the favorite books/desert island texts, compiled by Andy Frazer.
This image of the New York State Pavilion from the the 1964-65 World’s Fair at Corona Park is a fairly new image of mine that is featured in the Nocturnes 2008 exhibit. You’ll notice that there is an audio clip attached. Press play and you can hear the night sounds that surrounded me while I was exposing for 3-4 minutes between LaGuardia’s airplanes flying back and forth. Night photography is all about capturing the moments of time and given the lengthy amount of time that you are exposing for, I couldn’t help but notice the sounds that surround us at night. Whether it be the crashing of the ocean waves or in this case the chirping of the still taut wires of the Pavilion pinging above the constant hum of the highway. Since February, I have been using a Sony PCM-D50 portable audio recorder to record interesting sounds that accompany the night. Look for more examples here soon…

B&H’s Event Space has invited me back to speak on “The Art of the Long Exposure” on July 23rd. My talk/slide show presentation focuses on pinhole and night photography and the creative vision and unseen beauty that lay between 8 seconds and 8 hours of exposure. The first presentation 2 months ago was sold out plus I have added some new material. To sign up or find out more information click here and then click on July 23rd. Hope to see you there!

Good friend and Uber Night Photographer, Joe Reifer, recently returned from a fantastical night journey through an immense salvage yard of abandoned cars in the Mojave Desert. You can start the journey here, but make sure you also visit his three galleries worth of images. His gentle use of light inside several classic cars and choice of shooting directly into the moon take these surreal images to a whole other level of night photography.

The father of war photography, Robert Capa, has finally come home. Over 3,500 negatives dating from 1936 –1939 and taken during the Spanish Civil War have been found. Thought lost during the Nazi invasion, the negatives are in surprisingly good condition. They have been transferred to the Capa Estate and are in the hands of the International Center of Photography as they decide how to archive them.
Capa, whose famous mantra was “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” was never a man to hang on the sidelines. The swashbuckling photographer also created the most important photo agency of our time, Magnum.
Magnum revolutionized the Photography Industry by becoming one of the first photography agencies that let the photographers control the rights to their negatives. A standard we now take for granted.
Thanks to Tim Atherton for posting this news.
You can read the full NY Times article here.

In other news, photos by Joe Reifer and Andy Frazer were accepted into a Contemporary Night Photography exhibit titled Darkness Darkness. It opens on March 18th in Cambridge, Mass. Did I mention it is at Harvard? Congrats guys for making it in!
The show looks phenomenal, a literal Who’s Who in the Night Photography World. For a preview and more info click here.

Finally, looking for good cheap art? Check out the 20×200 online gallery.
Every Tuesday and Wednesday they feature 2 new pieces of work from two artists, one photo and one work on paper. Each image is available in 3 sizes with the smallest size being reprinted the largest batch, an edition of 200, for 20 bucks. 20×200 features a lot of new artists but as usual, good art goes quick, especially for $20.

Welcome to the latest version of Ruinism!
Sorry for the delay ~ Ruinism is now compliant with HD/BluRay/and all the latest new fandangled technology out there!
After a year of blogging I met with “my people” who met with “their people” and we decided to add a new look to the Ruinism website! The general consensus from viewers like you was bigger pictures and an easier to read background. So a wider format was created, all the sidebar links now run along the top and a switch from a black background to white for ease of reading. You can still click on all the small blog pictures to view a bigger picture!

Check out the Portfolio section, it has been totally edited and updated. It now uses a cool feature which makes viewing images in slideshow or individual format much simpler. The Portfolios are now divided into four groups: Exposures, Pinhole, Nocturnal, and Ruinism. We have also added a Shop section where you can finally purchase some of these limited edition fine art photographs online.

I’ve had a great year sharing my adventures and photos with you all in 2007. Thanks to everyone who has viewed, commented, and given feedback on the site. I’m constantly inspired by the world around us and plan to continue to share this vision with you.

This site couldn’t have happened without tech maestro Sean Thompson who has spent hours, weeks, months, and years it seems, into making sure the website is working and looking good. And of course, my wife and muse Nancy who teams up with my sister-in-law and muse, Sandy, to make sure only my finest work makes it to these pages!

We’ve got a lot planned for 2008, so sit back and enjoy the ride!

The Haugh Drive Garden photo above was taken at night during the last full moon of 2007.

~g