Atlanta Native’s Photos at Hartsfield-Jackson
EXHIBIT EXTENDED THROUGH JUNE
Professional Photographers Association of America member Barry J. Taratoot was selected by the Artists in Exhibition program at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to showcase his works in the Atrium Gallery, located in the heart of the airport’s Main Terminal.
The exhibit, entitled “Les Fleurs” (French for “the flowers”) and sponsored by the Department of Aviation’s Airport Art Program, opened March 23 and was scheduled through May 16 but was recently extended through June. The featured framed images range in size from 34 inches-by-46 inches to just shy of four feet wide-by-six feet high.
Given that each piece in this collection is floral, the Atrium bursts alive with subtle splashes of color, the perfect fine art complement for an Atlanta spring and early summer.
Taratoot, age 52 and a native Atlantan, is one of eight area artists invited to exhibit a photographic body of work at Hartsfield-Jackson in 2012. He does all of his own printing and finishing work in his home studio in Dunwoody.
But what makes these specific works of Taratoot’s truly unique is the fact that no camera whatsoever is used to photograph the plants. Instead, he invested in a high-end scanner which employs a double-pass system: The plants are “photographed” at night in complete darkness and very high resolutions, and the images are imported to Photoshop CS-5 for color balancing, dirt and dust removal, leveling and cropping, but no other enhancement tools are used to manipulate the images.
“Most people who see them at first glance believe they are looking at an illustration or a painting, they don’t even identify the art work as a photograph,” Taratoot said. “That comes as a real surprise to them. They look at me in disbelief, and then they ask what kind of software I used to get them to look this way.”
Taratoot also photographs weddings, corporate events, bar and bat mitzvahs, wine tastings and also catalogue work for a manufacturer of fine jewelry in Boston.
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