New Mexico Prints celebrated the grand opening of their gallery on Saturday, which showcased New Mexico’s beauty through high quality canvas prints shot by local photographers.
Robert Jaramillo and Lyric Moya, the co-owners of the gallery, began planning their gallery a little over a year ago. While only being in the building for three months, they have transformed the space from a concrete shell to a functioning gallery with renovated walls, flooring and lighting.
According to Jaramillo, they were inspired to create the exhibit to highlight the beauty of New Mexico, since they believe the media often highlights the negative aspects of Albuquerque.
“There are a lot of negative things happening in our state, but there are also a lot of beautiful things that are occurring in our city,” Jaramillo said. “All over New Mexico is so beautiful. We just wanted to create a way to shift the focus of our city from a negative to a positive light.”
The gallery features prints from nine New Mexican photographers, which Jaramillo and Moya discovered on Instagram. Jaramillo said they picked photographers that seemed to have a positive impact on the Albuquerque community.
“All of these people had the same drive, the same vision, the same passion and the same pride for our state,” Jaramillo said.
One of the featured photographers, Ian Beckly, is a University of New Mexico student who has been taking pictures for almost two years. Within the gallery, he displayed a water reflection image from Balloon Fiesta, an aerial shot of the Bisti Badlands and a sunrise over White Sands National Monument.
Sharing places and experiences with others inspires Beckly to travel and take pictures. He said the aerial shot of the Badlands was one of his favorite photos because of the memories attached to image.
Josh Lane, a recent UNM graduate, displayed images of nighttime astrophotography taken at Casa Blanca, New Mexico and White Sands. The photos were taken using a technique called drone locating, which gives the effect of circles and rectangles seen in his pictures of the night sky.
The images appear bright, even though they are shot in the dead of night. This is because the pictures are shot with a long exposure allowing in a lot of light, which Lane said can make it look like the pictures were shot in daylight.
“I really love shooting New Mexico at night, because you get a totally different perspective. The night sky here is so spectacular,” Lane said.
Lane, Beckly and the other photographers in the gallery will have their images displayed for the foreseeable future, but the work hung on the walls will be switched out every few weeks.
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Every piece at New Mexico Prints is for sale, with a wide variety of sizes and prices for different customer needs. Jaramillo said they print images in-house, so if a customer sees an image they like, but it is the wrong size, they can customize it to fit the size and medium the customer desires.
The studio also offers printing to the public, so non-professionals were invited to come in and get a picture printed at a reduced rate.
Amanda Britt is the photo editor of the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at photo@dailylobo.com or on Twitter at @AmandaBritt__.
