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New Barry Lobdell exhibit opens next month

SARANAC LAKE — An opening reception for a new exhibit featuring the work of photographer Barry Lobdell is slated for Sept. 2 at the Adirondack Artists Guild.

The reception will be held from 5-8 p.m. This year represents Lobdell’s 50th as a photographic artist and 24th as a member of the artists guild.

Lobdell’s love of photography began in 1968, when he walked out of a pawn shop in Ocean View, Virginia with a used 35mm half-frame camera. The camera cost him $20 and its half-frame format allowed him to shoot 72 exposures on a 36 exposure roll of film, a great help to his limited budget. He used the camera for several years while he was in the Air Force, taking snapshots of friends and places he visited.

Later, in 1972 while in college at SUNY Albany, Barry got serious about his photography. He bought his first SLR camera and took several courses where he learned the technical aspects of processing film and making prints in the darkroom.

Aside from formal classes, his training has all been on the job, working both as a self-employed photographer shooting weddings, portraits and a wide variety of other subjects.

Now, 50 years after 1972, Lobdell has assembled an exhibition of photographs which have been taken since his introduction to the art of photography. Approximately half of the photos represent his concentration on “street photography” — candid images of people and their creations, mainly in black and white and taken during the first half of this 50-year period. The remainder of the show is made up almost exclusively of landscape images, mostly of the Adirondacks, where he has lived for the past 26 years.

He counts the works in this exhibit among his favorites and all of them are newly created, whether from original negatives and slides or digital files. The images were made with a variety of cameras, both film-based and digital. Specialized cameras among his hardware have been Hasselblad and Noblex panoramic cameras as well as a Fujifilm X100 model, which is modified for infrared shooting.

The Adirondack Artists Guild is located at 52 Main St, Saranac Lake. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays.

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