NEW New Work Samples

...plus click here for the most recent work in a new window

These images are part of a series that I've been working on for a few years now—large format photographs of nighttime landscapes. Most of this work was shot in the middle of North Carolina in the middle of the night on a 4x5 or 8x10 view camera with film exposures averaging 20 minutes or longer. There are also scenes from a midwinter shooting trip out to the southwestern U.S.,as well as a few scenes from my native East Tennessee. For the most recent work, including winter shooting trips to the coast of Maine, the mountains of East Tennessee, and the waterfront of Edenton, North Carolina, as well as a new direction with still life around the house, please click here, or on the above link. For older work, please click the links at the bottom of the page. More tech specs about the images are provided at the bottom of the page as well.

In the above images, the strange colors are actually the ones at the scene, or, more correctly, the ones that result from the film's interaction with the many strange lighting sources at night combined with the long exposures. Sometimes, as is the case with the Amarillo grain elevator and the Haw River Bridge next to it, the exposure was close to 40 minutes with a cloudy or foggy night sky and a full moon. The long exposure with the strong moonlight filtering through and reflecting off all the cloud cover makes the scene look very bright. It's not until you notice that the ground is dark in an unnatural way that you realize that they weren't shot in the daytime.

The final prints are large, glossy digital C-prints (still a wet darkroom process, but the paper is exposed with laser light interpreting the digital file from the scanned negative rather than enlarger light interpreting the negative directly). Many are printed quite large: 30x38 inches or larger. Feel free to drop me a line at mj@mjsharp.com , if you're interested in pricing and edition information on a particular image, or if you'd like to schedule a studio visit to see samples of the work. Any upcoming exhibits of this work will be listed under Exhibitions on the main page. You can also send a blank email to add_me@mjsharp.com to be added to the e-mail list.

A small sampling of earlier images are available at these links: