Captured images
Fine art photographers show their best at ‘Shades of Gray’
The image resembles a gymnast leaping into the void, long hair streaming behind her.
With apologies to Tom Petty, David Lynch’s “Free Falling” is actually an inverted shot of a woman in a yoga pose, the crisp contrast of black and white framing her body.
Lynch’s portrait is one of more than 250 featured in the Third Annual Shades of Gray Fine Art Photography Show opening at EXPO New Mexico next weekend.
The juried show lured more than 400 image entries from 130 New Mexico photographers.
Lynch grew interested in photography after vacationing in Alaska in 2006. He spotted and photographed a pod of orcas. But the pictures didn’t turn out the way he had expected.
So he studied under a Beverly Hills photographer who had shot the weddings of Steven Spielberg and Christina Applegate.
“It changed everything,” he said, “the way I looked at photography, the way I looked at emotion, they way I looked at everything.”
He opened his own studio in 2007, which lasted until about 2014. He blamed its demise on the accessibility of digital photography and social media. Today he supplements his photography as a real estate agent.
He shot “Free Falling” in his studio with very deliberate lighting to produce the high contrast.
“To me it was very intriguing,” he said. “She’s actually moving backwards and it’s inverted. You get that juxtaposition of her falling into whatever you want to imagine.”