Going Places

Photographer Gail Yampol is going places.

The photographer, known for her trips to far parts of the world, is exhibiting her newest works at Town Centre Gallery.

"What I love about her work is that she goes someplace exotic," gallery Curator Shannon Tipple-Leen said. 

"It's the angle of the piece and the way she sets it up," Tipple-Leen added.  "And the mood she creates through, you know, mists and lighting."

Yampol began her art early in following the model of her father, also a photographer.  "He bought me a little camera, and I just loved it," she said.

"I loved walking around town where I lived," she added.  "I loved taking pictures of people."

As a young Manhattan elementary school teacher in the early 70s, Yampol often took photos of her students and  gave them the photos. 

She also expanded her repertoire, photographing many scenes of the New York. 

"I would go into Central Park on a Sunday with my friends," she said.  "And I would walk around and take all the people, the guy with the balloons, just whatever caught my eye."

At the time she was shooting black and white.  She printed her pictures in the tiny bathroom of her studio apartment.

Later in life, she lived for five years in picturesque Aspen, Colorado.  It was there, in that mountain wilderness, that she developed an eye for shooting nature. 

"I always had an eye for nature," she said. "But I lived in Manhattan and, again, there wasn't a whole of nature except Central Park."  A hiker, backpacker and skier, Yampol took her camera with her everywhere.

However, it was after moving to Seattle that Yampol finally felt that she began to explore herself as an artist.  She joined the Mountaineers, bought a tripod, and embarked on shooting trips.

She also continued teaching elementary school. 

"Part of the passion is that I do units with my kids," she said.  "I do one on the Arctic and Antarctica.  I've been to both places.  So, I come back and I share my photos with my kids."

An example is her work, Condor in Flight, Patagonia, which is part of the exhibition.  "There were only three days where the light came out and actually we could see where we were," she said.  "Those condors were flying around."

"And I was out there and shooting and shooting and shooting," she added.  "And I was able to get a couple of shots." 

Her travels have taken her to a number of countries; among them Italy, where she shot her work, View from Riva Degli Schiavona, also part of the exhibition.

Her next trip to an exotic place is to Bhutan next fall.  "That's going to be really cool," she said.  "That will be people, that's the Himalayas, that's nature, it's architecture."

Her exhibition runs at Town Centre Gallery through February 19.  More information is available at Shorelinearts.net.