Los Gatos Weekly-Times Photograph by Jeff Kearns A portrait of the artist at work. Love for landscape inspires photographer By Jeff Kearns Rodney Moorehead picked up photography like anyone else: as a teenager with a dummy camera. In his case, it was a trip to Norway when he was 13, along with his family and a Minolta AF telephoto point-and-shoot. "I fell in love with the landscape," says Moorehead, 23. "And then I just started dabbling in taking landscapes." Now, Moorehead's landscapes and other photos are hanging on the walls of the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company, where the photographer is exhibiting for the first time. And he's graduated from the point-and-shoot to a complex Hasselblad medium-format camera, which uses film with 6x6 centimeter frames. The 13 photos in the exhibit are Moorehead's favorites from the last two years, mostly taken in and around San Francisco and Yosemite. The photos are all framed 16x20 inch prints on canvas. To get the canvas prints, Moorehead had the images printed to photographic paper, then stripped the emulsion and melted the photo to the canvas. From San Francisco, there's "Bay Bridge from Yerba Buena Island," "Golden Gate Bridge at Night," "TransAmerica Tower and City Lights," "Fish-Eyed Financial District," sunsets from the Marin Headlands, Seacliff and Pier 39, and others. And yes, there is a trend there: "They're mostly sunset or night photos," he says. "I have to go shooting when I get off work." To help finance his sometimes costly photo habit--and pay the bills while studying photography at West Valley College--Moorehead has worked behind the counter at Los Gatos Camera for the last two years, and other camera stores before that. "I try for unusual views that people haven't seen before, to get that unique perspective," he says. Some of the photos involve Bay Area icons such as the Golden Gate and Bay bridges. "I found them interesting--their light, their shape, and the movement, how they draw your eye into them," Moorehead says. The Yosemite photos include "Half Dome from Yosemite Falls" and "Vernal Falls." Moorehead admits he's also a sucker for waterfalls. "Ever since I was in Norway, I've just been awestruck by the sheer power of them, the amount of water, and the sound." Almost all the photos in the showing are color, with one exception: "Demon," a photo of a marble gargoyle face that Moorehead said he couldn't resist including with the color photos, because of its stark contrasts. After all the landscapes, Moorehead says he's now starting to do more portraits, and wants to start working professionally where he first began: doing outdoor travel photos. The show runs through Jan. 27. Call 377-0923 ext. 2 for more information. [ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 13, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.