Recently, I attended a meet-the-artist event and found the artist’s work interesting and some of the pieces quite intriguing. The artist is Jim Trombo, of Jim Trombo Photography. Trombo displayed his work, “Nature’s Graces in Rural Places” at the Geauga Park District’s West Woods Park’s nature center located on State Route 87 on the Newbury/Russell Township line. Trombo was hosting a meet-the-artist night, that was very successful, even during COVID.
Trombo’s amazing photos were displayed in the hall and around their meeting room. He was on hand to meet and greet everyone and talk about what inspires him and answer questions about his work. Trombo takes the photos, prints them on canvas, seals them with a water-based lacquer and then stretches the canvas. The stretching and lacquered finish makes the photos almost look like a painting. This process has many more hours of labor than mentioned. In fact, to get a photo to this point, this process has been done anywhere from as few as seven time to as many as 20 times on a smaller scale picture than what he sells. This is a very condensed description of the process. It is a labor of love. His process brings out details one might miss in an ordinary photo displayed behind glass. They are exquisite, the details in them are mesmerizing. Most of his photos are taken locally, in Geauga County and Portage County, with a few from Lake and Cuyahoga County too. There are even a few from New York, Pennsylvania, Hocking Hills, OH. and other areas he finds intriguing.
Trombo says, he scopes out something interesting and different from your traditional landscape pictures. Then, he said, he might return to the place a few times, (sometimes 4 or 5 times) at different times of the day, playing with angles and lighting on the subject before he decides which shot captures what he is looking for. He does mostly naturescape photos, but there are a few that are technically not nature, but interesting. The old organ found in a barn, an old boot left behind, a barn door, a halter hanging in an old barn etc. Interesting, but not necessarily what we’d call nature.
Trombo said he’d have an image in his head of what he was looking for, but over the years, he had to learn that what was in his head wasn’t what he was capturing. So, after working through the frustration of that, he realized he was capturing exquisite images and he just needed to be more flexible with the images he had in mind. When he did this, he saw that his images became more unique and detailed, showing his maturity in the images he was capturing with his camera. Those are the images we see today.
I noticed he seemed to take a lot of photos at La Due Reservoir, so I asked why. He responded, “It’s an ever-changing, off the beaten path landscape, that shows me something different every time I go there.” The images he captures there are ones that folks might not even consider looking for or would ordinarily see. He says he is just drawn to the region and it’s also a familiar place that people can relate to.
Although it took years to perfect his art and a lot of trial and error, he did have some formal training as well. Trombo took a few photography classes at Hiram College when he was studying for his bachelor’s degree. The classes he took were enjoyable and sealed his love for the pursuit. Now this is back during the film era of photography. Jim loved black and white images on film the best. He loved working in the dark room as much as taking the images. So, he built his own dark room in the basement. Having access to a dark room whenever he wanted, gave him time to perfect his images.
Subscribing to all kinds of photography magazines helped him perfect his art as he read and learned from other artists. He said, that Ansel Adams was a big influence on him. He was mesmerized by the incredible images and ground breaking techniques. There were other artists that were inspirational to him as well.
Over the years, Trombo has perfected his work by trial, error and a lot of hard work. He learned to switch from film to digital photography and switch from a lot of black and white (B&W) photos to color. He still loves B&W photos and does shoot some images in B&W today. Jim saw digital photography was coming before the digital era began. He knew when they got digital photography perfected it would be the way of the future and it is. Switching over to digital was a welcome challenge that took a lot of hard work to perfect the printing of his images.
I asked, what equipment he uses to take his images. He says, he keeps his equipment pretty simple. A Nikon DS800 DSLR body and three types of lenses, (35mm, 50 mm, and an 80-200mm) along with a tripod. He uses solid neutral density filters to control the light and those are the only filters he uses to capture his beautiful images. He doesn’t use any filter that would change the color of a photo.
In 2015, he took a leap of faith and held his first art show at West Woods, a part of the Geauga Park District (GPD). It was very successful. He has held shows at Mill Creek Park and a Mantua gallery too, all prior to the one that he held recently at West Woods of the GPD. Trombo said, these settings compliment his style of photography and I concur, they do.
He was looking to do more this year, but COVID has slowed him down. Currently, his work is on display at West Woods Nature Center until October 5, 2020. You can also see his work in the main corridor of University’s Geauga Hospital campus and some of its auxiliary buildings as well.
This all started because an uncle handed him a camera when he was 9 years old and told him to go shoot whatever you want. So off he went to the back woods of their property and snapped away. This was the beginning of a great love. He later got a camera from a friend for Christmas and he became enamored of the device. He learned how to use all the buttons and soon knew that possessing a camera was empowering and magical in his hands. Fifty years after he first was handed a camera, he has perfected his art that has brought him to this point in his career.
Jim is co-owner — with his brother Jeff — of Premier Printing Company. It’s a commercial printing company that caters to the client’s needs in the parks and recreation and the food and drink industries, along with manufacturing and publishing. Jim resides in Mantua, with his wife Lisa and four dogs, that Lisa trains and shows. Jim can be reached at jim@premierprintingcorp.com, call or text him at 216 952-7550 and his images can be seen at www.jimtrombo.com . Jim also does contract work for his photography as well.
