Deck the Halls with Fine Art Photographs

Titled “The message is simply LOOK,” the latest philanthropic contribution to Loma Linda University is a collection of 62 fine art photographs by V. Leroy Leggitt, PhD, DDS, MS, and Stephen Vodhanel, PhD. The photos, mostly natural landscapes but also a few abstracts and architectural studies, adorn the hallways and classrooms of the School of Pharmacy. The school sponsored the exhibition to provide students, faculty, and visitors a window into the visual delights of the world. According to Larry Vogel, a representative of a prominent Southern California photography gallery, the prints appraise at between $800 and $1,100 each, which establishes the value of the contribution at between $49,000 and $68,000. Dr. Leggitt, who teaches orthodontics in the LLU School of Dentistry and paleontology in the department of earth and biological sciences, has been seriously photographing for the last three years. Dr. Vodhanel, who works at the School of Pharmacy in educational support and at the LLUH office of educational effectiveness in distance education, is a journeyman photographer whose works are included in numerous private, corporate, and educational collections. “I bought a Nikon D7000 camera en route to Yosemite,” Leggitt says of the genesis of his involvement with the artistic medium, “and got caught in a storm with rain and snow and fog. I got some good shots with it and was hooked.” “I got my start as a photographer watching monster surf at the Wedge at Newport Beach,” Vodhanel notes, recalling the legendary Orange County jetty where surfers go for enormous swells and breakers. “There was a story in Surfer magazine with a photograph of some 25-foot waves and I decided I wanted to be a photographer.” Despite their close friendship and mutual love of the Western landscape and photography, the two men approach the medium in very different ways. Leggitt works solely with a digital camera, while Vodhanel uses digital as well as film cameras and works in the West Coast photographic tradition of Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, and Edward and Brett Weston. Another divergence concerns the way they represent hues and tones. Vodhanel is a purist whose major concern, besides the design and placement of visual elements, is an accurate and refined rendition of colors and tonalities in both his color and black and white work. Leggitt, on the other hand, employs high dynamic range (HDR) imaging techniques to produce graphic, saturated colors. If Vodhanel’s images are straightforward, minimally retouched photos, Leggitt’s are vivid interpretations in bold, exaggerated hues. “I enjoy doing HDR photography,” Leggitt reflects. “Steve’s always trying to talk me out of it, but I think you can see things on HDR you can’t see any other way. To me, it looks a lot more like the way I see than anything else.” “That’s why Monet painted the way he did,” Vodhanel interjects. “He didn’t see like the rest of us—to each his own.” Perhaps the final distinction between the two photographers concerns what motivates them to get outdoors with the camera. “I like landscape photography because it allows me to capture instants in time when naturally occurring elements come together in interesting ways,” Leggitt asserts. “For example, a rainbow over Half Dome may only exist for a few minutes, but if a photograph is made of that instant in time, the resultant image can be viewed by hundreds of people long after the rainbow has faded. For me, the challenge and thrill of photography is to try to capture images that other people like to look at over and over again.” Vodhanel’s response is more pragmatic. “I like to drive,” he says. “I love to get in the car, throw my camera in the case, and go to all these cool places. In 1976, when I became serious about photography, one of my professors asked why I photographed and I told him that. He thought it was a really bad answer, but it’s true. I like to go places and see things.” Throughout his four-decade pilgrimage in fine art photography, Vodhanel has gained a greater depth of exposure to the traditions, tools, and technologies of the medium than his talented cohort Leggitt. Starting with a 35mm roll film camera in ninth grade, Vodhanel graduated to a large-format view camera after seeing images by Ansel Adams at a Sierra Club meeting. “I decided then that photography was what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “So I went to Cypress College and took a bunch of photo classes.” While there, he met his friend and fellow lensman John Charles Woods, who introduced him to Brett Weston, the photographic artist Vodhanel credits with teaching him to see. In fact, many of his images reference the highly abstracted style of the late Modernist master. As Vodhanel rhapsodizes about the “good old days” when photographers hand-developed individual sheets of film according to precise time and temperature formulations derived from extensive testing of tools and materials, Leggitt chimes in with “I’m glad I skipped all that!” “You missed out,” Vodhanel replies. W. William “Billy” Hughes, PhD, dean of the School of Pharmacy, says his personal appreciation for the gift rests on his love for the landscapes and objects depicted. “Congratulations to Dr. Steve Vodhanel and Dr. Leroy Leggitt for their gifts, the majority of which photographically capture amazing perspectives in natural history,” the dean says. “My academic journey has deep roots in the biological and earth sciences, and it is personally gratifying to be reminded of that journey as I walk through Shryock Hall. I trust that student pharmacists, staff, and faculty will pause and enjoy the photographed beauty of Creation.”