The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Fine art photography consists of much more than point and click, and a finished art piece involves as much time and effort in the printing, as it does in the field.

“Digital cameras have opened the field of photography to so many more people,” Kennewick artist Barb Thrall observes. “I think some of the consequences of this are a devaluing of the medium – I think there has been a misunderstanding” (on the part of the public) “when photographers use Photoshop in the processing of their images.”

Photo enhancement, Thrall goes on, has been around almost as long as the technology of photography itself, with even household names like Ansel Adams intimately involved with the editing process.

“Ansel Adams was a great photographer, but he was a master in the darkroom,” Thrall says.

“For the most part, I do all my own printing,” she adds. “I don’t think that printing photographs can be emphasized enough – it’s part of the medium.”

Thrall creates landscapes, floral works, and still lifes that hearken the viewer’s mind to paintings by the Old Masters – her images are soft, ethereal, with a sense of supernal airiness that transcends reality. One feels the heart beat slowing and the breathing gentling upon viewing three pears in a simple setting, or a landscape that is as much sky and clouds as it is ground.

“I want people to just slow down a bit,” Thrall says. “To breathe in and out.”

Thrall’s work is on display at Wenaha Gallery through Saturday, November 18. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.