"AFTER DARK" presents a series of photographic images that function as a nostalgic look back at drive-in theaters, documenting a vanishing slice of life. Where once was a lot crammed full of automobiles, laughter and teenage angst, huge cinematic screens presenting the latest movie - there now rests giant decaying blank canvases. Most of these behemoths have disappeared; some have been left to stand and rot over time; some are still in use using new technology to keep up with the times. My hope is to capture your most vivid memories of days gone by.
This project is featured in #136 June 2018 publication of Lenswork Magazine: www.lenswork.com
“As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.”
-Hermann Hesse
Photo-based mixed media starting with black and white images and painting with pastels, watercolor, oil based paints and colored pencils.
CRU Uncorked, a fine dining experience, featuring French New American cuisine set in a country château. A relaxed, welcoming atmosphere with four themed dining areas featuring my custom vineyard-inspired large wall murals and photography.
Tiger Glen Garden is the inspiration for this garden designed by renowned landscape designer Marc Peter Keane.
One of my clients and her husband wanted to commemorate the sale of their company. They had planted a Japanese Maple in their yard the same year that their business was launched, almost 30 years ago. This beautiful tree had been on a very personal journey with them. My challenge was to photograph this tree during each season for a complete year during 2013/2014 beginning with Autumn. Here is what my client said about the project.
“This magical project “Kisetsu”, represents celebration, reflection and transformation for my husband and me. What I love about Ryn’s work is that she skillfully includes the viewer in a moment. In this project, Ryn captures color, light, texture and action be it Autumn’s wind, Springs rain, or the stillness of both winter and summer.”
A hand crafted photograph meticulously combined over 200 separate images into one 4 foot long image and printed on Japanese Unryu paper. The client wanted a nod to contemporary styling, hence, the framing in plexiglass.
A beautiful manor home located in the hills of West Virginia.
Commissioned for a design firm, this expansive structure is located in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
A large, six-foot long commissioned photograph to celebrate the completion of a new home build.
A corporate client wanted to celebrate the life of his retired horse with photographs that spoke to him on a more visceral level.
Moving to the country, a client wished to capture the exquisite dawn they experience every morning.
An interior designer requested a series of red barn photographs to be installed in one of her new homes.
"I love early mornings when it feels like the rest of the world is still fast asleep and you're the only one who's awake and everything feels like it isn't really real and you kind of forget about all your problems because for now it's just you, the world and the sunrise."
Photopolymer Gravure process is remarkable - very similar to that found in traditional etchings - but is developed in tap water as part of a non-toxic process.
"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water."
-Loren Eiseley-
Photographic floral botanicals in the style of Pierre J. Redoute (1759-1840), capturing the subtle effects, luminosity and dimensionality of the delicate flowers.
A hand crafted photograph meticulously combining over 200 separate images into one 4 foot long image, printed on Japanese Unryu paper.
What is Wabi-Sabi?
"The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated and trimmed away."
- architect Tadao Ando
There is a magic in shooting the rugged and dramatic Oregon coastal waters in black and white. The mysterious images create a quiet, intimate experience conveying the seduction of the scene without the distraction of color.
In contrast, capturing the Pacific Northwest primeval forests in color communicates the true essence and beauty of the otherworldly forest.
The largest national park south of Alaska, Death Valley is known for extremes: It is North America's driest and hottest spot (with fewer than two inches of rainfall annually and a record high of 134°F), and has the lowest elevation on the continent—282 feet below sea level. Even with its extremes, the park still receives nearly a million visitors each year.
These mysterious sliding rocks have puzzled geologists for decades. Nestled between the Cottonwood Mts. to the east and the Last Chance Range to the west, these rocks can be found on the floor of the playa with long trails behind them. Somehow they slide across the playa, cutting a furrow in the sediment as they move.
Time-lapsed photography suggest that the rocks move when razor-thin ice sheets start to melt during periods of light wind. These ice panels can move the rocks up to five meters per minute.
Racetrack Playa is a lake bed that is almost perfectly flat and almost always dry. It is about 4 kilometers long (2.5 miles) - north to south and about 2 kilometers wide (1.25 miles) east to west. The surface is covered with mud cracks and the sediment is made up mainly of silt and clay.
The climate in this area is arid. It rains just a couple of inches per year. However, when it rains, the steep mountains which surround Racetrack Playa produce a large amount of runoff that converts the playa floor into a broad shallow lake that might be just a few inches deep at the low point of the playa. When wet, the surface sediments of the playa are transformed into a very soft and very slippery mud. When the mud dries out, mud cracks that typically cover the floor of the playa are formed.
The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley are at the northern end of the valley floor and are surrounded by the Cottonwood Mountains. In between many of the dunes are stands of creosote bush and some mesquite on the sand and on dried mud, which used to cover this part of the valley before the dunes intruded.
The tiny grains of quartz and feldspar that make up the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley began as much larger pieces of solid rock but, through erosion, became sand-sized.
The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes' highest peaks rise approximately 140' above sea level, though shifting winds and gravity alter heights and shapes daily. Dunes such as these form over thousands of years as blowing sand reaches an insurmountable obstacle (such as mountains). When sand particles can go no further, wind churns the blocked sand into very fine particles and deposits them at or near the base of the obstacle. An arid climate is the foundation for such a process.
The hard drought-plagued sun-baked slopes around Zabriskie Point support almost no vegetation and possess a stark beauty. The rare rain that comes to Death Valley arrives in the form of downpours, which form the rills and gullies that reshape the landscape.
The Devil's Golf Course is a large salt pan on the floor of Death Valley, located in the Mojave Desert within Death Valley National Park.
It was named after a line in the 1934 National Park Service guide book to Death Valley National Monument, which stated that "Only the devil could play golf" on its surface, due to a rough texture from the large halite salt crystal formations.
Dante's View, a part of the Amargosa Range, is one of the most extraordinary sights in California. These mountains were created when the surface of the earth was being stretched, forming a horst or a pulling force, forming grabens. The crust ruptured because of this force, and as a result, lava erupted and ended up deposited on top of the preceding sedimentary rock.
Rhyolite is one of the best-preserved ghost towns in America. Situated just outside Death Valley National Park, the site provides a glimpse into a small mining community in the desert from a century ago.
One of the most mysterious and evocative art installations of the American west stands "The Last Supper", a collection of giant ghost-like figures garbed in white - the work of several Belgian artists who travelled to Death Valley in 1984 to escape the confines of Europe and seek inspiration from the desert.
Photographed at the abandoned Chippewa Lake Amusement Park in Ohio. For over 100 years, the park featured 3 roller coasters and a large ballroom where live bands played every night. Its demise came in the late '60s with competition from Geauga Lake and Cedar Point.
"And up the ladder of the earth I climbed through the horrible thicket of the lost jungles to you. Machu Picchu.
Tall city of stones stacked up in steps, at last a dwelling where what is earthly was not hidden under slumbering clothes.
In you, like two parallel lines, the cradle of lightning and humanity rocking together in a thorny wind."
-Pablo Neruda
"Take nothing but memories…
…leave nothing but footprints."
- Chief Seattle
"At first I just savored the strong emotions the place provoked, which mixed the awe one feels in the presence of monumental architecture with the impatient curiosity of an archaeologist at a new site. The place encouraged fantasies of lost worlds and vanished empires, of abandoned cities…
The grain elevators' resemblance to habitable architecture only serves to dramatize the differences. The windowless, largely unbroken expanses of concrete …ten or more stories tall & hundreds of feet long produce a strange sense of dislocation when one is near them. The curved sides of the concrete elevators do unexpected things to shadows, transforming straight lines into arcs, drooping wires back into straight lines."
- Frank Gohlke, from Measures of Emptiness: Grain Elevators in the American Landscape
