What’s better than traveling up and down the state seeing the beautiful sights California has to offer? Seeing those sights through the creative eye of an artist with a macro lens and digital enhancing prowess.
Patricia Stalter and Sharon Foster bring the highlights of California to their two-person exhibition California Gold on display at Shepard Hall Gallery in the Santa Maria Public Library through the end of May.
From golden hills to luscious vineyards, the duo captures the heart of the Central Coast and display just what makes the Golden State special.
“We just wanted to bring out the gold nuggets of California,” Foster said.
Stalter said she and Foster are BFFs, which means best friends in fotography, if photography were spelled with an ‘f.’ It isn’t, and the real meaning is best friends forever, but the meaning can go either way in this case. The two met several years ago when they were both members of the Santa Maria Camera Club and went on shoots together.
“We had such a good rapport that we continued to do these shoots,” Stalter said.
[image-2] Sometimes Stalter and Foster plan trips to locations such as San Diego or Carmel for their shoots and sometimes it’s simply off-the-cuff artistic sensibility.
“We’ll call each other on a given morning and say, ‘Hey, the light looks good. Let’s zip on over to the Dunes’,” Stalter said.
Those are the times when the two often discover something new. Stalter said it was on one such trip that she first visited the Guadalupe-Oceano Dunes, even though she’s lived in the area for 20 years.
[image-3] Both photographers are proficient in digital photography and prefer enhancing their photos digitally rather than using straight photography. Paired with lighting contrast and deep shadows, the process results in softer lines and quality that looks a lot like an oil painting.
“We both like color and have a tendency to take a lot of the same subjects,” Foster said.
Although this will be the first show they’ve done together that focused solely on their work, they have sold their work together for years at events. Foster said she realized when their work started selling that what started out as a hobby for them had turned into something of a career.
[image-4] “It’s one of those things you do and people say ‘I like it, I want it’,” Foster said.
Even though they spend a lot of time taking in the scenery through their lenses, they don’t consider themselves landscape artists. However, they do enjoy photographing grapes and vineyard scenes and flowers, and the subjects come up often in their work. Together their work makes a perfect match.
“Our work is very similar. We work well together and our work is complementary,” Foster said.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone never has enough time to stop and smell the roses. She can be contacted at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 21-28, 2009.