Tom Sobolik
Tom Sobolik
Tom began his career in 1978 as a photojournalist for the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire and for the Associated Press. He subsequently relocated to New York City where as a free-lancer for Black Star he traveled widely to places as remote as the far western desert of China. Assignments closer to home included a photo essay on the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine for Smithsonian Magazine.
Tom's photographs of the New York Stock Exchange, the "velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia, Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina and a variety of other subjects appeared in major publications like Time, Newsweek, Business Week and in important European and Japanese magazines.
Diverse corporate assignments have taken him inside the reactor core of a nuclear power plant, to Times Square on the Millennium New Year and to the offices of top executives like Jack Welch of General Electric and Rupert Murdoch. 
Tom has lived on the banks of the Hudson River for many years and has always had a great affinity for the river and its surrounding landscape. His panoramas of the river are an expression of his belief in the personal importance of the local landscape. They also aim to depict the sense of endurance and infinity of the river.
His work will be included in a traveling exhibit later this year produced by the environmental group Riverkeepers.
Artist Statement
Its been about 6 months since the banking crisis walloped the economy of the city at the mouth of the Hudson River. Its been over 100 years since the Hudson River School of painters brought international fame to the American landscape and 2009 is the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's exploration of his namesake river. With those three things in mind I say "take me to the river."
My photographs are intended to invite viewers to the river and into a magically sublime landscape that was first artistically explored by the 19th century Hudson River School. Those painters such as Thomas Cole, Asher Durand and Fredrick Church saw the American wilderness as God's Paradise on earth - distinctive from the European countryside in that America's landscape was pure and unspoiled by civilization. That utopian view was abandoned long ago after years of war, development, industrialization and pollution. Even so the river and surrounding landscape have retained an aura of endurance and eternity. My photographs aim to depict those qualities. I find great satisfaction and strength in the local landscape, particularly in hard economic times like these. Its good to pause and appreciate the natural wonders around us.
I think the landscape around New York City has become under appreciated. The pollution that plagued the Hudson River for most of the 20th century left it with a bad reputation that remains today. A lot of people don't realize that much of the pollution has been stopped and the river has been substantially cleaned up. Once a virtual open sewer, a public beach at Croton Point was reopened to swimming a few years ago. I hope these photographs will help people take a fresh look at the rehabilitated river. It is important to the continuing clean-up to appreciate the Hudson and care what happens to it.
My photographs are made with digital techniques virtually unheard of only a few years ago. Each finished photo is actually a composite of multiple images "stitched" together in a computer. A series of overlapping images shot on the same horizontal plane are seamlessly joined to make a panorama that is many times wider than it is tall. The result is an extremely detailed composite. Additionally, digital adjustments to both the darkest shadows and the brightest highlights make for an amazingly detailed image hardly possible in color prints from traditional film.
With all that said altering the content of the photographs is kept to a bare minimum. I follow documentary and photojournalistic principals. I don't do retouching that would change or eliminate elements of the scene as they appeared when the photographs were taken.
They can be viewed both from far away and from very close up. What appears to be a dust spec from a normal viewing distance reveals itself to be a soaring bird with close inspection. Looking closely at another photo reveals sail boats in the fog, a pontoon boat pulled up on shore, a bird nesting in leafless trees and many other details.