Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Night Photography Workshop

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Hosted by
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Limited Availability!!!

Date: Saturday September 18th 2010

Instructor: Gabriel Biderman

Where: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, 540 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Cost: $95

Gabriel is very excited to be able to offer this unique one night photography class in the legendary Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
With over 90 acres of old sculptures, mausoleums, and tombstones dating back to 1850, Sleepy Hollow is one of the most sought after historic cemeteries in the country.

Gabriel will lead you from dusk until midnight and help you capture the spirit of Sleepy Hollow. The class will explore how images are created when you go beyond the fleeting moments of time and expose your camera for seconds and minutes.
In this 7 hour workshop, you will learn light painting techniques that will enhance the many beautiful details of the cemetery. You will also focus on using the moonlight and star trails to enhance the night sky.
Gabriel Biderman is a self-taught photographer who has been specializing in the fine art of the long exposure with everything from pinhole to the latest digital cameras. He will go into detail on how to meter and process your long exposures using either film or digital capture.

Please click here for additional information & to sign up for the workshop.

Orpheus ~ The Open Air Cinema of Kos

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We just got back from 10 days on the Greek Islands that culminated in an amazing Greek Wedding in Crete.  1,762 images were shot during that time, but let’s start with the first adventures on the island of Kos.
Ancient and Modern Greeks love to be entertained.  It is no surprise that the few buildings that have survived from Ancient Greece are either Theaters or Temples.
America has her drive-ins theaters that started in the 1930’s; Greece introduced their first Open Air Cinemas or Therini Kimimatografiin in 1919.  Like the drive-in, they went out of fashion in the 60’s-80’s.  But now, the romance of a movie under the stars, or even under the Acropolis, is back and Greeks and tourists alike are flocking to these nostalgic venues.
Once Nancy and I had checked into Hotel Americana, we strolled towards the city center of Kos and stumbled upon The Orpheus outdoor cinema.  It was early afternoon and a women was struggling to open the front gate.  I excitedly approached, probably too much American coming at her too fast, but she slowly understood that we would like to peak inside the theater if possible.  The gate finally clicked open and she let us slip in.  She was coming in to clean the theater in preparation for tonight’s 9pm show.  It was a mess, typical of any movie theater, people left there garbage everywhere after  the show.
But it was beautiful.
Vines, jasmine, and Bougainvillea grew all over the 2 side walls that enclosed what appeared to be an outdoor cafe.  Approximately 80 chairs and 20 tables where set up in front of the beautifully white screen.
Click Click Click.  I turned to Nancy and we immediately knew what we were doing for our first night in Greece.  Going to see……The Prince of Perisa?
You’ve got to be kidding me?  They’re showing a Hollywood Persian Action film in Greece?!
They’ve been enemies for over 2500 years, oh Alexander the Great is surely spinning in his grave!
We got there early for the 11pm show,  I wanted to find the manager and ask if I could set up two tripods and cameras to capture the theater at night, during a long exposure.
The ticket taker pointed me to a man who was smoking a cigarette and chatting with someone right before we walked into the theater.  I showed him my tripods and explained that I’d like to take some pictures of the theater during the movie.  I’d sit in the back and not use flash and promised not to disrupt anyone.
He really didn’t care, as long as I paid for my admission.
So in we went, and I set up in the last row, in front of the concession stand.
Two tripods, two cameras; one digital, and one film.  Hey, I got permission, so why not go all out!
About 30 people were settling into their seats, no one seemed interested in me until the credits started rolling and then an older gentlemen, in broken English, asked me what I was doing.  I told him that I was documenting the theater.  He told me I couldn’t take pictures during the film but I assured him that I had permission and the ticket taker who was now running the concession also backed me up.  He didn’t want to, but he let me be.
I set the film camera to expose…the exposure which you see below was for half the movie or about an hour long.  The quick digital test shots proved that an 8 minute exposure was adequate at f/11.  It was probably in the high 70’s and the mosquitos were now beginning to attack Nancy.  Another beautiful aspect of the Greek Cinema is that they do not dub non-Greek films.
Though I don’t think a good dubbing would have helped The Prince of Persia.
Another thing typical to the Greek Cinema, there is always a halftime.
Usually it is a mad dash to go out for a smoke, but at the outdoor cinema you are allowed to puff as much as you please.
Our friend, who I know think was the projectionist, came down to see me as the 2nd half started.  He told me I definitely had to stop taking pictures.  He was citing that the movie industry owned the rights to the movie and no recordings were permitted.  I showed him the back of my screen and pointed out there were no images being captured, just the white screen and the theater.  The images kind of threw him, but he was determined that I stop and take down my rig, so I did.  I had captured what I came to capture and was now testing out some new compositions and didn’t want to cause a scene.  As we broke down the tripods, the woman from the concession stand sounded like she was telling our friend to chill out.
No worries, I told her, I appreciated the chance to capture the cinema and gave her one of my cards.
As we pass the halfway mark of the summertime, take a look around; lots of Therini Kimimatografi can be found, not only in Greece, but here in America.  So enjoy the magic under the stars!

New updates to the Ruinism website

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My awesome web designer, Sean Thompson and I have recently revamped the entire Portfolio section of this website.  Check it out and I would love to hear any feedback.

The first section is titled Ruinism. This is an ongoing project of mine that started with my love for mythology and visiting ancient ruins. Over the years I’ve incorporated modern ruins as I try to capture the timelessness and spirit of the place. Ghosts and nudes will sometimes be seen in these spaces and add a sense of beauty to the decay.

All images are part of a bigger storyboard that is often unknown.
The theme Exposures is based on capturing a mysterious moment in that bigger story. These images will often make you ask, “What is it?” “What just happened?” or “What will happen?”

Two new themes have also been added, Time Exposed and The Bridge Project.
Time Exposed is a collection of my photographs that focuses on the passing of time around a single exposure. Taken mainly at night or with a pinhole camera during the day, I seek to focus on the capture of time itself and the unseen moments that happen between the seconds, minutes and hours of time exposed.

The Bridge Project is my most recent ongoing theme. Bridges are modern marvels.
These solid structures often will lead you over a dangerous chasm of water or rocks. I try to heighten that dichotomy of order and chaos in each image. Some bridges are famous but most others are simply utilitarian, however each has a story to tell.

The image above is titled the Cylon bridge.  It is the Roosevelt Lake Bridge or sometimes referred to the Roosevelt Dam Bridge because it replaced traffic that was driving over the Roosevelt Dam in 1990.  This image has quickly become one of my favorite images and is a nice long exposure of 10 minutes shooting due north.  Click on the image to enlarge it as well as see the other exposure details.  Nancy and I stumbled across this bridge while we were driving on the Historic Route 88 in Arizona.  We had just visited the Hoover Dam a week before and when I saw there was another Dam along this road, well we realized we had committed to a Dam Tour.
Sorry.

I later found out that the The Roosevelt Dam Bridge spans 1,080 feet across Roosevelt Lake and is the longest two-lane, single span, steel arch bridge in North America.  The original dam-top roadway was designed to allow two Model-T Fords to pass abreast, but today’s recreational vehicles and full-size automobiles are too wide to permit two-way traffic.
This info and more can be found here.
I’ve also included an image of the Roosevelt Dam so we can see the entire picture.  I consider myself a manscape photographer,  I like to incorporate man made structures with the landscape.

What else did you think I meant?

Happy 127th Birthday Brooklyn Bridge!

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On this night 127 years ago, 14 tons of fireworks, more than 10 thousand pieces, were set off from the Brooklyn Bridge in an outstanding display of pyrotechnics that lasted an hour.  Hundreds of thousands of spectators gathered along the shores of Manhattan and Brooklyn to witness the biggest celebration the cities had ever experienced.

It was the first bridge to cross the strong and swift East River.  And for a time it was known as “The Eighth Wonder of the World” as it towered far above any other building in New York.  It cost just one cent to walk along the Great Bridge’s Promenade and later that year had two streetcars that would carry almost 10 million people across in their first year of service.

The Brooklyn Bridge was officially opened on May 24th 1883.  It was deemed an official holiday known as “The People’s Day” and the president of the United States,  Chester A. Arthur, was one of the first to walk across with the Governor of NY and soon to be next president, Grover Cleveland.
They walked over on, still to this day, the only elevated promenade on a bridge.
150,300 people crossed that first day the New York Brooklyn Bridge was open to the public.

If you have never walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, you are missing one of the most amazing views and feelings a human can have.  I am lucky to bike over this Great Bridge on a weekly basis.  It is like being on the top of the world.  You can see the Statue of Liberty to the left and the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges to your right.  The cityscapes surround you and the cars whiz by without notice below.  You have an unobstructed view of the world, except for the cables which safely envelope you as well as hold the 6,620 tons of weight that is suspended over the East River.

Below is a direct quote by David McCullough, who wrote The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, from Ken Burns America Collection – Brooklyn Bridge:

I feel that the bridge makes one feel better about being alive.
I think it makes you glad that you are part of the human community.
That you are part of a species that could create such a structure.

We are builders and we when see something that we built well, our hats are off!
We stand there and say, “Isn’t it marvelous?”
But isn’t it marvelous that it was built by people, people like you and I.
People like we would like to be, at least.
And brave, courage, the tenacity of those people, the confidence.

All of those are… they sound like platitudes
But they are truths, they are simple truths.
But some truths need repeating generation after generation after generation.
And the Brooklyn Bridge continues to repeat truths that we need to remember.

I highly recommend taking a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge sometime soon…

A Letter to Grandma

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Phyllis Freeman Gustafson was my Grandmother.
She was also known as Bubbie, Mom, Auntie Pessie, and a dear friend to a lot of people.
To me, she was Cape Cod.

One of the first times that I met her was after my first airplane flight at the age of 5.  My Mom and I just moved from the West Coast to as far as you could go on the East Coast, Dennisport Massachusetts. The memories are flooding back.

We were surrounded by water on the peninsula turned isthmus, known simply as the Cape. And it was the water, the sea, the warmer Atlantic Ocean that fueled my Grandmother.  We practically lived at the beach during the summer, collecting silver dollars, shells and hunting for hermit and horseshoe crabs. The Cape’s high and low tides push and reveal the underbelly of the Sea. During low tides Grandma would lead us as we would walk or float out to the distant sandbars. And there we would rest, in the middle of this temporary island, with the shore now in distance along the horizon line.

Our visits out to these sandbars were never too long, the tides quickly changed their minds and reclaimed the land they revealed.
Thinking about this now, it is easy to make allusions to sandbars and the style of photography that I love.  Long Exposure Photography reveals the unseen time:  the seconds, minutes and hours that can evolve in a single exposure.  Star trails, moving water, and time can not be seen with the naked eye but it can be captured with a camera.  However, each capture, each picture, is a one of a kind.

I took 8 shots of the lower left image. I varied the exposure between 4 and 8 seconds, and each time the water and sky moved differently, thus creating a unique photograph every time.

Grandma Gus was a high energy woman, to say the least.  She spoke her mind, whenever, wherever, and pushed you to be. That push frustrated a lot of her family and friends at times but probably because we didn’t know what or who we wanted “to be” yet.  Once we had an idea, she fueled it ~ bringing us to museums, sending books, or taking us on inspirational trips.

When I graduated college, majoring in Theater, she got me a camera. We all know the road that has led me down.
And when I moved from the East back to the West and was going through some tough times, she flew out to see me. She saw that I did not want or know how to process what I was going through,  So she took me to the Ocean to see the unseen. It was the first time that Grandma Gus touched the Pacific Ocean. Walking through the water at Ocean Beach in San Francisco is not a popular thing to do, the water is constantly cold, no swimming out to sandbars here! But Grandma took off her shoes and didn’t think twice.
I had the camera in my hand and took one shot, the one you see above.

I love you Grandma, you were always there for us, even when we didn’t think we needed it.
I’ll miss you dearly but will carry your spirit as it continues to push me along..

I invite anyone who knew Phyllis Freeman Gustafson to share a story on this blog. In this little way we can keep a record of her life and inspirations. If you would like a free copy of the 8×10 photograph of Phyllis walking along the Pacific please contact me.