The first time Robert Hamilton picked up a camera and got down to business was when he was in college in Arizona. He was going to shoot the bullfights in Nogales.
“I thought that would be good, and Arizona was also new to me—the desert, the flowers, and all that,” he said.
That’s also when the spark began.
But even then, Hamilton admits, his shutterbug habit was reserved only for photos of family and friends. Fast forward many years. After retirement, Hamilton and his wife began to travel extensively throughout Europe, and he started showing his photos to friends who told him to take his photography to a professional level.
“So I was encouraged by people looking at boring slide shows, and if they didn’t fall asleep after the 250th slide, they’d say, ‘Oh this is really good,’” he said jokingly. “People would say I have a good eye for composition or say that something was really, really good, so I was encouraged by that.”
That’s when he finally got serious about pursuing the art of photography. He joined the Lompoc Valley Artists Association and the Lompoc Photography Guild and learned about digital photography, something he said he had no knowledge of before.
Hamilton brought together some of his more recent photos—along with some of his early shots—for his latest show at the Grossman Gallery in Lompoc. The show features 30 pieces from his travels, mainly through Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland, but there are a few nautical photos from Nova Scotia as well. Some of his work on display goes back as far as 1959.
Hamilton said many of the photos depict food and wine—subjects in which he’s long held interest, just about as long as his interest in photography. Growing up in Chicago, Hamilton cultivated an interest in food because of his grandfather’s bohemian bakery. A love of wine came later when he moved to California.
His latest show—People, Places and Pleasures Two—will be a carryover of his March showing at the Cypress Gallery, where he was the featured artist of the month for the Lompoc Valley Artists Association. But for people who think they’ve already seen it all, there’s new material in this show. m
Arts Editor Shelly Cone prefers real food to photos of food—it’s more filling. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 3-10, 2010.