Photographer Mark Klemick’s exhibition Composed: Uncropped Portraits of Light, Shape and Color showcases eleven unaltered digital photographs. They are snapshots from around the world, including Italy, Germany, Kenya, Australia and right here in Central Pennsylvania.
Klemick’s is “a robotics engineer with an amazing gift for capturing detail,” said Maria Burchill, gallery coordinator for the Betsy Rodgers Allen Gallery in Schlow Centre Region Library, where Klemick’s work is currently featured.
While the photographs in the exhibit are a diverse mix of landscapes, buildings and intricate close-ups of objects, Klemick said he doesn’t have a preference when it comes to his subjects.
“I’m simply looking for colors, surfaces and shapes,” he said, adding that the photographs chosen for the exhibit are among his favorites.
He said there is something special about the composition that makes the photos appealing to the viewer.
“I was drawn to these images for their provocative angular composition,” he said. “They’re so visually exciting they are almost a confection.”
Klemick first became involved with photography when he was a freshman in college. He has been shooting off and on since then, but photography has become more of a constant in his life in recent years, as have other artistic pursuits like oil painting, stained glass, and jewelry making.
As an engineer of automation and robotics, Klemick has been able to develop a strong appreciation for both arts and sciences in his daily life.
“There’s a balance between my work and my artistic pursuits,” he said, adding that his experience with both have given him the chance to make sense of what is in the world.
Klemick’s advice for aspiring photographers is simple: practice.
“The most beneficial thing has been shooting often and developing the ability to see compositional possibilities even when shooting quickly,” he said.
Klemick’s photographs are “wonderful examples of the sense of composition that photographers master in order to capture and effectively communicate a moment in time to the viewer,” Burchill wrote in an email.
“Our hope is that visitors will be inspired by what they see and that they will pursue their own creative expression,” Burchill wrote.
D.J. Lilly, office manager at Schlow, is fascinated with Klemick’s talent for capturing “details in every day life that we don’t take the time to examine,” she wrote in an email.
“They allow us to see the world in a new way, and hopefully prompt the viewer to look at their own environment a bit more closely,” she wrote.
Composed will be on display in the Betsy Rodgers Allen Gallery in Schlow Library until Sept. 28.
To email reporter: kiz5038@psu.edu
