(West Palm Beach, FL – March 4, 2010) The signature image
for
Lewis Kemper’s
new exhibit, Capturing the Light, at the Palm Beach
Photographic Centre shows a brilliant spray of golden,
orange and red lava dancing against the blackness, while
people – tiny in comparison – stand in awe.
What it takes to shoot a natural landscape image like that,
or as Kemper likes to say “capture the light,” is the theme
of his show opening at the Photographic Centre on March 13.
In preview of the show, Kemper will hold a free lecture at
7:30 p.m. on March 10 at the West Palm Beach Library
Auditorium, across from the Photographic Centre in City
Center. The Palm Beach Post sponsors this free lecture
series.
The free opening reception for
Capturing the Light
will be held 5:30-7 p.m. on March 13 at the Photographic
Centre; the show closes June 5.
Kemper will also lead a three-day workshop on mastering the
new features of digital photography, “Taking Advantage of
Digital,” from March 12-14. To register or for more
information, visit www.workshop.org.
For California-based Kemper, 55, the rules of photographing
nature and catching that special light are to “be patient,
be ready all the time and be prepared to walk away with
nothing.”
The story behind the volcano image says it all: On the Big
Island of Hawaii, Kemper and his group left for Waikutanaha
(the volcano) at 3:30 a.m. hoping to shoot images of it
against the water and moonlight, but as they arrived about
an hour later, the moon was fading. For the next few days,
they arose an hour earlier each night to try to get the
shot, leaving at 2:30 a.m., then 1:30 a.m. and so on.
On one night, Waikutanaha was just steaming and bubbling
before it shot up into the spectacular fountain of lava that
Kemper captured with his Canon 50D pre-production camera.
“It was luck. The eruption lasted about a minute, going up
three or four times,” Kemper said. “The people in the
picture were very dangerously close to the lava. It was
actually illegal for them to be where they were.”
Kemper would like his students and lecture guests to learn
from him the importance of light and composition.
“Especially as a nature photographer, you are simply
capturing the light and placing a frame around a subject,”
he said. But when you do it well, magic happens.
Kemper’s other favorite photos, shown as a series in the
show, are of a lagoon in Iceland, where several icebergs are
calved off a nearby glacier. While he and his team never got
the sunset they waited for, they did manage to catch a break
in the clouds that lit up the tops of the icebergs as they
floated in the water.
“We got three very spectacular and very different sunrises,”
he said.
About the Palm Beach Photographic Centre:
The Photo Centre is located at the downtown City Center
municipal complex at 415 Clematis Street in downtown West
Palm Beach. Hours are 10:00 am - 7:00 pm Monday – Thursday;
10:00 am - 5:00 pm Friday and Saturday; 1:00 - 5:00 pm
Sunday. For more information, please call 561.253.2600 or
visit www.workshop.org or www.fotofusion.org.
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