Masterful 're-Master'

So, he began working the tech side of videogaming instead. Once having found his way to a camera, his art took off.

There’s a cinematic sweep to the exhibit photos that reminds me of visuals in ‘70s movies. Is it composition, color palette, or the subjects? Your guess is as good as mine, but he has mined visual gold.

Cool Jazz is a genre that’s spare in note and tempo, hauntingly meditative. Carucci’s artworks convey that emotional landscape, even as they are literal landscapes in dyes on paper.

His photographs are all objective realism, yet have the feeling of abstraction.

“The ambiguity is on purpose,” he said. In some he’s deliberately fooling the eye.

In all his photos foreground is distinct from background, giving each a two focal point perspective. The background sky carries the complexity, sometimes by contrast, sometimes by repeating the colors, always demarcated from the foreground.

Three of the pieces are low key having dark foregrounds. “Black Ocean” appears as a grayscale lava field, with a striking sunset behind. “Red Valley” sports a muted meadow with Yosemite-like peaks backed by a flaring sky that could have been an Ansel Adams piece. “Four Mile Dream” is a dark curving rock ridge, but is that water or fog reflecting a red-toned sky?

Two others appear to be dreamlike waterscapes in warm neutrals, while five more are varied scenes of sand dunes, color renditions similar to classic Edward Weston pieces that also uncannily resemble panoramic shots from “Lawrence of Arabia.”

By far his favorite and mine is “Aspen Impressions,” an artistically smeared high key picture of striped white aspen trunks, that recalls shots of Russian birch forests from “Dr. Zhivago.”

It may seem odd to relate these still photos to movies, but they have that quality of a bigger story than a frozen view usually provides.

Having quite his own story, Carucci’s career in graphic software engineering is still his day job at Nvidia. Now he’s proud of earning a Master’s Degree in Photography from Professional Photographers of America. The pieces in this show are his thesis. Not the dry academic kind — this isn’t a classic institution, rather a jury of his peers in the loftier realm of imagery creation.

“Don’t listen to others. Do what you love,” he said. And so he does.

He strives to reach the heights of the photographic masters. Carucci’s images are strikingly reminiscent of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, had they been working in color instead of just black and white. Yet his actual idols are modern photographers: Peter Lik and Marc Adamus.

He is clearly at the stage of mastery on his own terms.

“Being on the field with the people I love and capturing what I feel is the only way I know to improve," is Carucci’s motto.

There are only 12 large primary pieces in the exhibit, though there are supplemental materials showing his journey. Yet each piece will have you gazing for a while both at the photo and wherever it takes you inside your own thoughts.

Take yourself to Half Moon Bay for this show, and let his images sweep you away to places real and imagined.

An artist reception 1-4 p.m. Feb. 28 at the Coastal Arts League Gallery.

You Can Create Too: For a photographic safari of your own near home, check out the walks and tours hosted by Peninsula Open Space Trust, openspacetrust.org, and California State Parks, parks.ca.gov. Pescadero Marsh this month is a good starting place.

Coastal Arts League Gallery, 300 Main St., Half Moon Bay, coastside-artists.com, (650) 889-3000.

Bart Charlow, author, artist & consultant blends over 45 years of painting and photography with narrative storytelling. Explore the intersection of observation and expression through his insights on the local art scene, find his books at bartcharlow.com and his art at bartsart.weebly.com.