ROCK SPRINGS — The Community Fine Arts Center is showing a large collection of work by local fine art photographer Paul Ng. The exhibit opens on Saturday, July 1 with a public reception from 2 to 4 pm. It will be available to see through July 28.
As a longtime resident of Rock Springs Paul Ng is well known as a fine art and nature photographer. He was born near Guangzhou, China and moved to Hong Kong just before the political turmoil of the infamous Cultural Revolution. Hong Kong was then a British Colony. For a teenager not knowing constructing many full sentences in English, the next few years are extremely demanding in order to catch up with the kids in the competitive Hong Kong education system. Nevertheless, hard work paid off. Paul later became a foreign student in Tennessee and finished with a BS in Biology and a MS in Environmental Health.
Ng’s first job was with the Wyoming Department of Health. After, fifteen years. He started working with the Sweetwater County Environmental Health and retired in 2017 after 22 years.
Enrolling in a summer class at Western Wyoming Community College in 1987, Ng became fascinated with black and white photography. Large format photography became his mainstay starting in 1991. He works in both black and white and color. Ng continued to pursue this new-found art form by studying with the renowned photographer John Sexton on four occasions. Sexton was Ansel Adams’ assistant and consultant until Adams’ death in 1984.
Ng is faithful to the darkroom work, processing and printing all his black and white images. He has also printed many of his color images, particularly Cibachrome (later known as Ilfochrome) photographs. From 2002 to 2017, Ng taught evening credit-classes in photography at Western Wyoming Community College.
Ng’s images have been published in Outdoor Photographer, Shutterbug, Wyoming Wildlife, American West, Hong Kong’s Fotoarts and Photog magazines. He has had numerous one-person and group exhibitions in the local libraries, the Community Fine Arts Center, Old West Museum (Cheyenne, WY), Larson Gallery (Yakima, Washington) and the Wyoming Art Council Gallery in Cheyenne. He won the Honorable Mention Award in the Visual Arts Fellowship competition hosted by the WY Fine Arts Council in 2002.
Ng’s works have been collected by many private collectors as well as organization such as the University of Wyoming Student Union, the UW Convention Center in Laramie, and the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne.
“It is really hard work when you carry a heavy load of large format camera equipments especially on a long hike,” Ng said. “Over the years I have put numerous footprints in the Wind River Range, Yellowstone and Grand Teton. I have explored a lot of stunning landscapes in Utah and other western states, and sometimes it extends to as far as Maine and western Canada. Needless to say, we live in a very special and beautiful country!”
