Exhibit focuses on photos
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“Most of my works are composites,” he said. “There are many pieces to them. I like my pictures to tell as story.”
“End of Days” evolved from a road trip to Albuquerque’s West Mesa near the volcanoes. A ribbon of road extends into infinity beneath rolling clouds. A long figure stands with his arms outspread, looking up at the moon in the daylight.
“You couldn’t really see the mountains,” Gilbert said. I was “adding the person there looking up, going ‘What does it mean?’ or giving yourself up to the heavens.”
Photoshop combined photography with art, he said.
“That was right up my alley, so I fell in love with it.”
Helen Johnson’s “Solitude” reflects both her love of scenery and her passion for photo manipulation. The print shows a sailboat backgrounded by a distant lighthouse.
“This was taken on the Oregon coast very, very early in the morning from our hotel,” the Placitas photographer said. “I added the sailboat. I do a lot of compositing.
“I added the lantern (to the left of the sailboat) to give it a little more light.”
Johnson has been a photographer for nine years after retiring as a hobby shop owner. She says it all started when a photographer friend urged her to join the Enchanted Lens Camera Club.
“I had a friend who saw in my point-and-shoots some promise,” she said. “I quickly decided I wanted my photos to look like what I saw in my mind’s eye and not just what was there.”
Her prints feature old, restored cars, decrepit buildings and barns, as well as landscapes and antique airplanes.
“I love old things,” she said, “— anything that creates a mood of nostalgia.”