KHANA 08 REVIEWS JERRY L DAY

Continuing on the lighting techniques and night photography search, I came across another gentleman- Jerry L Day. I have to say I was very drawn in by his works. Even though many of us have seen this type of imagery in any national geographic magazine or documentary time lapse type video, I found his work to be a little more refreshing than the norm. Whether it was his use of accent lights on the subjects in the foreground or the way he composed and cropped the shots.

Several of his photographs have the stars time lapsed to where they show the Earth's rotation and eventually make circles as the Earth orbits and the stars appear to "move" and create lines in the sky. There are these two photographs that have these (what I would assume to be) stone-like huts in the image with the motion blur of the stars in the background that are aesthetically pleasing. The soft glow being emitted from inside the hut/home that focuses the viewers attention there for a bit but then move towards the skyline and the white lines created by the stars. In one of the two pieces, between these two light spots is a harsh border of darkness and black and then the negative space plays a part in creating more dynamism in the piece. The viewer is also able to concentrate on the shrubbery surrounding the huts and the dirt/Earth being present.

Most of his work is at night and with the use of the natural light of the moon and sometimes using a flashlight to help strengthen certain aspects of the shot. The more I browsed through his website and perused through what seemed like hundreds of collections in his portfolios, I kept being drawn to the ones where the sky and stars played a huge part in the photograph. The more extravagant the stars and stardust were in the background, the more I would spend time on the piece. Not so much because I thought it had more of an "oooooh" or "ahhhhh" moment, but because space and everything outside our atmosphere is extremely interesting. How so many of the stars captured in the photograph and the light they emit could be no more and it just takes so long to reach our system.

That and how the interaction between the dark foreground is broken up by the piece of landscape Jerry Day has chosen to isolate by bringing it forth with light, allowing us to identify its form and know what it is; and of course the space and sky in the background