The image that teased the Day in the Life of Larchmont exhibit on posters and press was this one above, of the Larchmont Train Station. It was taken by Elisabeth Pollaert, a professional photographer in Larchmont.
She says the train photo (and others in a series) were taken using a tripod.
“I set up in a place that I thought looked good, with the sunset in the distance, the clouds overhead, and the station lights in good places, and I just waited for trains to come in. Every time a train came in, I took pictures from the time it approached the station until the time it pulled out. As it got darker, I used slower and slower shutter speeds, which is why on that one shot, (see Closing Photo today at 6:00 pm) you only see one person, the one who stood still, and everyone else looks like a ghost, because I was using a reasonably slow shutter speed by then.”
Ms. Pollaert was a hobby photographer who turned it into a career, and has a special love for travel photography.
“What is really amazing to me is to capture a sense of a place, to have someone say, ‘wow, I sort of feel like I have been there now.’ One tour guide, in Syria, was frustrated that I never took pictures of the things that he pointed out to me, the things that tourists always take pictures of. He asked, ‘what do you want to take a picture of, then?’ I replied, ‘Syria. I want to take a picture of Syria.’ I think he thought I was a little nuts.”
One recent project took her to Ethiopia. “I went there to photograph the work that a group of volunteer neurosurgeons do there. The organization I went with is K.A.N.S., the Korean American Neurosurgery Society. They go there and train local neurosurgeons and do operations. There is a big problem there with pregnant women not getting enough folic acid, which results in a condition where there a lot of fluid in the brain of their baby and it has to be drained surgically. If it’s done in time, the child will be fine. So they do a lot of those operations, also back issues, herniated disks, and helping accident victims with fractured spines.”
Her next project will be a lot closer to home, “Shelter Cats,” taken on an iPhone (so as not to scare the cats with a camera) at the New Rochelle Humane Society.
“My goal is to show that shelter cats are beautiful and amazing animals,” she says. The photos will be shown at The Voracious Reader from April 8th through 22nd.
