North Gallery
Stuart Ostler Long Shots
March 22 thru May 14, 2004
Stuart Ostler came to the Capitol in 1995 and became Chief Capitol Photographer in 1997. He was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he developed an interest in photography at about age 12 when he spent all of his allowance and lawn mowing money on film for his little Polaroid Swinger. He was the feature writer and photo editor of his high school paper and he continued these interests by majoring in journalism and marketing at the University of Utah where he wrote for the school paper. While living in Tulsa in the early '80s, he designed and ran a free standing camera store complete with rental studio and darkroom space for the former Looboyle's retail chain.
Ostler currently operates a small business out of his home called Deja View and Associates, where he copies and restores old photos and does custom black & white photofinishing. This is Stuart's adopted state and he is often surprised by the beauty and diversity of Oklahoma. Rarely a day goes by that he doesn't marvel at the fact that he has the privilege to work in such a beautiful historic building. This is the first exhibit of his work, that is if you don’t count the 24x36 black & white photos on the walls of both snack bars here in the capitol.
Long Shots
A slice of life
The format of Longshots gives the feeling of a truncated view. It tends to pull the viewer’s gaze closer, as if you could look around the edges of the mat and see what else might be there.
Some images are new; some go back 20 years or so. Many were shot with a small Sony digital camera, and others are scanned from an existing collection of my negatives, prints and slides. Then the image is tweaked a little, manipulating the color, the highlights, the shadows, and creating the “watercolor” effect.
The large images are 8x22 inches; the small formats are 4x10 inches. This ratio of 2.75:1 is very close to our field of view when looking straight ahead.
–Stuart Ostler
Sponsored by the Oklahoma Arts Council. For more information contact Scott Cowan or Karen Sharp at 405.521.2931 or scott@arts.ok.gov.