Photography Show by AIPAD International Fine Art Photography
MOSES LAKE — Shooting photos of outer space will be the topic of a presentation in Moses Lake Thursday.
Astrophotographer Mike Brady will discuss the techniques of capturing the night sky, the equipment needed and the processing that’s needed to make the photos clear at the Moses Lake Civic Center auditorium, starting at 6 p.m. Admission is free, but seating is limited to the first 200 attendees.
Brady, who graduated from Big Bend Community College, went on to earn a degree in biology from Central Washington University, followed by a career in the army. When he retired, he taught biology at a community college in North Carolina before coming back to Columbia Basin College in Pasco, where he became the director of the observatory. That’s where he fell in love with photographing the heavens, he said.
“I took a lot of photography courses when I was in college,” he said. “That’s been kind of one of my hobbies for quite a while. And then like a lot of scientists, (I) have a lot of diverging interests, and one of them is the night sky. So when I got to CBC and started working with the observatory, it just became natural for me to take my photography and start using it on telescopes.”
The technology has come a long way since he first discovered photography, Brady said. Film is mostly a thing of the past; photography is almost all digital, which he said greatly increases what an astrophotographer can do.
“People who are in astrophotography now, because of the digital age, we can bring up images that are almost as good as the Hubble (Telescope). It’s really phenomenal what amateurs can do now.”
Brady’s presentation, hosted by the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center, will include images of galaxies, nebulae, the moon, the sun and comets, according to the announcement on the museum’s website. The presentation will be an open forum in which questions from the audience are not only welcome but encouraged.
“If I have time, at the end, what I want to do is actually take a picture that I’ve already stacked, and then run through the processing procedure to show how the digital age has really brought us to the point where we can do images like we d,” Brady said. “Basically what you’re after is to reduce the amount of noise that’s coming in, like light pollution, and increase the signal from a galaxy that’s 40 million light years away.”
Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.
BLACKEY, Ky. (WYMT) – Malcolm J. Wilson, of Blackey, won the 2024 East Kentucky Leadership award for Media and Technology.
Wilson said he believes capturing photos is in his DNA. He added at age three he would trot around his hometown of Cumberland, Kentucky with an empty film camera.
However, he said something happened at 6-years-old that shifted his focus as he heard something he had never heard before.
“He no longer had his Appalachian accent,” Wilson said. “He was Pronouncing every syllable.”
He said his dad’s friend had moved away and one day stopped at their home for dinner. However, Wilson said the change in his father’s friend confused him and he vividly remembers running to his father after dinner to ask him what happened.
“He said son, Theodore is ashamed of where he came from. He doesn’t want people in Louisville to know that he is from these Appalachian Mountains. He said don’t you ever be ashamed of where you come from. Don’t you ever be ashamed of these Appalachian Mountains,” Wilson said. “It became the catalyst for everything that I did in my life. That was pouring the foundation to make Malcolm Wilson who Malcolm J. Wilson is.”
Malcolm said he has spent his life with the goal of telling the truth of the misunderstood Appalachian people.
“We all have to fight. We have to fight now only here inside Appalachia. We have to fight for jobs and for environment and clean water and now we have to fight the drug problem. But then we also have to fight the rest of the country for what they think we really are and we’re not,” he said.
Malcolm and his late wife Jennifer worked together on a project that gained a large audience around the world. It was called, “Humans of Central Appalachia.”
They told the stories of Appalachian people through pictures and video. However, when she passed Malcolm said he could not keep the project going without her and his focus shifted.
He began working with students in the region. He started teaching kids the art of photography in hopes that they would love to tell the same truth he has worked to tell throughout his life.
When the July 2022 floods hit Eastern Kentucky Malcolm and his interns picked up their cameras to capture the stories. They began creating a list of needs and Malcolm made the decision to share the list with followers of his former project. He said he was amazed at the help they received as a designated UPS stopped in their community each day for several weeks with items on the list.
His photos were continuing to capture the hearts of his community around the world and make a difference.
“My work is not for pundits, critics or scholars. My work is of the people, by the people, for the people,” Malcolm said. “Something to balance how they feel about where they came from. To prevent the Theodore’s of the world from feeling like they have to change their voice.”
As Malcolm continues to write the next chapter, he said he is hopeful that one of his students will continue to write the book.
“It’s good to work with these kids. But I am hoping that at least one of these kids takes some of me,” he said. “When I’m gone has that same love for these mountains and this culture and keeps trying to spread the truth.”
The East Kentucky Leadership Conference will be held Thursday and Friday, April 25th and 26th, in Corbin.
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“Self Portrait as Emergency Shipwright” (2013), oil on canvas, 60 x 84 inches. All images © Julie Heffernan, shared with permission
Julie Heffernan likens her paintings to “advent calendars gone haywire.” Working in oil on canvas, the Brooklyn-based artist renders vast dreamworlds with tiny vignettes scattered across wider landscapes. Appearing from a distant or aerial perspective, the pieces envision the possibilities of life after fires, floods, and other climate disasters and potential opportunities for emerging anew.
Grand in scale and scope, the intricate paintings bear titles like “Self Portrait as Emergency Shipwright” and “Self Portrait with Sanctuary,” which nod to the personal details within each work. Various characters recur in the pieces, but where they once appeared alongside fresh fruit as an enduring metaphor for youthfulness, today, they’re surrounded by imagery of decay.”I find myself repeatedly drawn to landscape painting in order to explore my own issues, both planetary and personal,” she says. “I imagine landscapes that bear witness to our rise and fall as a great power but also to the workings of one woman’s mind.”
“Self-Portrait as Tree in Water” (2014), oil on canvas, 40 x 46 inches
Painting, the artist explains, is a way “to see better” and to place the struggles and difficulties of the world within a context. Despite fires raging in the background, or in the case of “Weather Change,” a massive iceberg rapidly melting in the seas, Heffernan’s works are not fatalistic, instead highlighting the immense beauty of human ingenuity. She adds in a statement:
I wanted imagery that might suggest other ways we could cope and possibly even flourish in a new extreme climate and to give my characters things they must tend. I give them water and tools to stop the burning; the tarred and feathered heads of big polluters; a library of great books to surround themselves with as they contend with the madness of man-made calamities.
Evoking the tradition of Hudson River School artists like Thomas Cole, Heffernan’s paintings focus on landscapes that appear amidst chaos as a sort of paradise. She’s also known to paint over and retouch works even after she’s deemed them complete, each time revising her idyllic vision and inching closer to the sublime.
It’s worth checking out an archive of the artist’s paintings to see how the scenes and characters have evolved. Follow her work on Instagram, along with updates about her graphic novel, Babe in the Woods: Or, the Art of Getting Lost, slated for release in September.
“Self-Portrait Between a Rock” (2014), oil on canvas, 68 x 66 inches
“Weather Change” (2019), oil on canvas, 74 x 96 inches
“Self Portrait with Sanctuary” (2017), oil on canvas, 102 x 76 inches
“Self-Portrait as Animal Bed” (2017), oil on canvas, 56 x 48 inches
“Study for SP with Mound” (2023), oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Imagining Worlds After Climate Disaster, Julie Heffernan Melds Chaos and the Sublime appeared first on Colossal.
