Don't miss this exhibition

If you live in eastern Massachusetts I highly recommend seeing the exhibition "Treasured Land: The Fifty-Eight U.S. National Parks in Focus".  It features about 100 photographic prints taken by photographer Quang-Tuan Luong over a fifteen year period during which he photographed all 58 national parks with a large-format camera.  The exhibition is at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts, and it will be there until October 17, 2010.  These images were taken with my Canon S90 compact camera without flash.  That's Quang-Tuan in the second picture.

You can also access his images through his Web site, http://www.terragalleria.com/.  The national parks gallery on his Web site features over 7000 images. But nothing can compare with the exhibition of his prints.  I think I will be happy just to view his prints at the museum, because though they are available for purchase through his Web site, at $600 for a 36-inch print, for example, they are expensive.  On the other hand, even these large prints are very sharp and detailed due to his large-format camera that uses 5"x7" film, which is 25 times the surface of 35mm film (and, in turn, 35mm film has more surface than most dSLR sensors). 

In one of the pictures in his presentation I think I read the label Technika or Tachihara on the camera and the lens was a Schneider lens. The camera he is using in the picture above is a Nikon dSLR, and it had the size of a full-frame model. He has a wealth of information on another Web site, http://www.largeformatphotography.info/

My wife and I heard him speak at the Museum earlier this month.  Unfortunately due to his heavy French accent, and a soft and monotone voice we were unable to understand him.  This was disappointing because he had many stories to tell about how he captured a selection of his images. And I couldn't understand the stories!

Quang-Tuan is working on a book which he expects to include several hundred of his image.  His Web site also indicates that Ken Burns featured him in his PBS series on National Parks.