New England at Night I Featured Photographer Bob Avakian

DESCRIBE YOUR CONNECTION TO NEW ENGLAND.

I grew up in Rhode Island, went to college in Boston, spent one year in New York City, and moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where I have lived for more than 40 years. I have a love of the ocean and the coast. Even when I vacation, I seem to be drawn to some island or somewhere that involves the ocean. I love the seasons in New England, especially spring and fall — though as I get older, I am not so sure about the cold and the snow!

DESCRIBE YOUR BACKGROUND AND EQUIPMENT.

I took a photography class as an art elective in college. As I was in the city at the time, street photography was my subject. Once I moved to the Vineyard and small-town life, though, I was too intimidated to continue street photography, so I put down the camera, except for taking photos of family and friends. Many years later, I purchased one of the first digital cameras that let you use a wide-angle lens, so I could take photos of my construction projects. Having some extra time on my hands during the recent economic downturn, I signed up for a workshop in architectural photography at Maine Media. As a result, my old interest in photography was rekindled into a new passion. Soon after, I discovered the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts. It offered a 12-week workshop called the Atelier, which met once a week. I was so inspired by this class I repeated it five times over the next two and a half years. The workshop was led by Karen Davis, who owns the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, New York. After that, I enrolled in a continuing-education photography class led by Stephen Tourlentes at Mass College of Art. As for equipment, I am a Nikon guy. I started out with the Nikon D100 and worked my way up to the D810, which I use today. Since my work is long-exposure, I always use a tripod. I also own the Sony a7r2, which I use mostly as a daytime camera, but while I am waiting for the long exposures, I wander around shooting short-exposure shots, looking for other opportunities.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

I think education is the greatest inspiration to me. To learn something just opens my eyes and makes me want to learn more. Aside from the classes I have taken, I enjoy taking workshops with various photographers whose work inspires me — for instance, Lance Keimig, who literally wrote the book on night photography, and Michael Levin, whose long-exposure photography I am quite fond of. The nighttime photography of Todd Hido was an early inspiration to me, and recently I had the opportunity to take a workshop with him. Here on the Vineyard I like to visit the local galleries. A couple of painters whose work struck a note with me and had some influence in my work are Mary Sipp Green and Marlee Brewster Brockmann, both landscape painters whose color palettes are so appealing to me. But it’s the night sky that can be the most inspirational of all. I often go out on my kitchen patio and, if the light is right, I may grab my gear and head out in search of that shot. It’s the mystery of it all that gets my heart pumping as I head out, driving around and looking, hoping for a moment of luck where I find myself in the right place and at the right time. Sometimes that moment comes, sometimes not — but when it does, I stop the car, get out, and try to capture the photograph. My body of work called “A Moment in Time Between Night and Day” is long-exposure night photography. The long exposures open the night, and with this technique, I can create a photograph that is different from what I am actually experiencing. It’s a kind of alternative reality. It is not night and it is not day, but the physics of the camera allow it to gather light, up to six minutes of exposure, and create this otherworldly view. To me getting the shot is only half the job, with the other half being post-processing, which I do with Adobe Lightroom; making the print, which I do with my Epson 9890 large-format printer; and creating the final presentation. For showing my work here on the Vineyard and elsewhere, I mount my prints to aluminum panels and then set them in a floating canvas frame. When I am done and can hold the work in my hand and say, “I did this,” it gives me a great feeling of satisfaction. To see more of Bob Avakian’s work, go to bobavakianphotography.com.

NEW ENGLAND AT NIGHT | FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER BOB AVAKIAN

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