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March 14, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 9S
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| ON DISPLAY:
Mike Scarpulla, an MSE Ph.D. student, poses in front of his photograph,
"Bug," which is part of an outdoor photography exhibit
at Brewed Awakening, 1807 Euclid. Scarpulla is an amateur photographer
who specializes in shots he finds while doing outdoor activities.
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MSE Ph.D.
student finds a knack for photographing the outdoors
Mike Scarpulla, a fourth-year
MSE Ph.D. student, gets out of the lab -- way out. He climbs rock, scales
ice and summits mountains, often in the Sierras and often with CHAOS,
the Cal Hiking and Outdoor Society. When he's out, he photographs what
he encounters. Two of his pictures are now on display at Brewed Awakening
as part of a CHAOS photography exhibit that Scarpulla organized. The
exhibit runs now through the end of April.
"I have an artistic side, but I'm really bad at drawing," he says. "Instead,
I like taking pictures when I'm out doing outdoor stuff. As a photographer,
I'd call myself an interested amateur."
His photographs, which were exhibited at Berkeley
Bowl and Espresso Roma before coming to Brewed Awakening, are the first
of Scarpulla's work to be publicly displayed. One is a landscape of
Joshua Tree National Park taken in the early evening after Scarpulla
and some friends had finished rock climbing there. "I happened to turn
around," he says "and see the golden sunset and hole in the rock and
said, 'Whoa, look at that.'"
His favorite photograph in the exhibit is a close-up of an insect he
noticed during an overnight kayak trip in New Zealand. "The bug stayed
still, and I saw all the colors and got as close to it as I could."
Scarpulla, who is mostly self-taught, says he likes to think about how
to "engineer" the picture and make it better. He also enjoys the technical
side of photography, such as figuring out exposure levels. In fact,
he photographs as a respite from his engineering studies. "I was taking
pictures of flowers in my backyard as a break from studying for my qualifying
exam last month," he says.
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