If you ever peruse Tyler Arboretum’s Instagram, you will likely see the inspiring photographs taken by Barry Rubin. In the present day of cell-phone photos, Barry is one of Tyler’s very own volunteer photographers and videographers, equipped with professional-grade skill, knowledge and artform.
Barry has been a volunteer photographer and videographer at Tyler since well before the days of social media. Even now with the ease of taking cell-phone photos, he has continued to share his professional-style photos and videos. Of his many artistic creations for Tyler, he puts together videos documenting and showcasing the work of volunteers at Tyler. These videos are used for volunteer recruitment and are shown at annual volunteer meetings. Click here to see an example of Barry’s work! (A tip from Barry: Click the settings gear on the bottom right corner in YouTube to switch to 1080p HD to view the video at its highest quality as intended!)
A member of Tyler for 40 years (!!!), Barry first came here when he was living in Delaware and joined a hiking club that came to Tyler. He “kind of just fell in love with the place” and has been coming back ever since! As he put it himself, the fact that he has been coming here for 40 years means two things: (1) he really likes Tyler, and (2) he’s old!
Barry doesn’t remember exactly how (or when) he started volunteering at Tyler, but he thinks he just thought this would be a nice place to take photos and that the photos he took here would have value and help Tyler to bring in more members.
But Barry is not a photographer by trade …. he was a physicist for more than 30 years! So where does his skill in photography and videography come from, you might wonder? In his last few years working as a physicist, he developed photography as a hobby. As a physicist, he had a background in optics, image analysis and color science, which naturally led him to this hobby (he would develop algorithms to extract information from the images such as size distribution, shape and appearance).
Barry Rubin at Tyler Arboretum.
He enjoys trying to “balance the aesthetic and scientific aspects of photography.” Aesthetically, he enjoys figuring out how to best present the things he is looking at, such as determining where to stand, the lighting and thinking about what impact the photograph will have. Then there is the technical side – developing the image to produce the most impact.
Barry spends a long time thinking about his images and how to present them so they have the most value for his Tyler viewers. The volunteer recognition video that he creates is a particularly long project that he works on throughout the year. He will meet with volunteer groups while they are working and then bring home photos and videos, spending a long time editing them. He takes his work seriously and wants others to enjoy his art work. He loves coming to Tyler, walking around with his camera and taking pictures. Flowers are one of his favorites to photograph.
Continuing to volunteer with Tyler gives him a reason to continue his hobby of taking photographs. And he does it for Tyler, of course! He hopes that when people see his work, it will inspire them to visit Tyler and become members. Ever since he started coming here all those years ago, it has remained his favorite destination because it provides “a peaceful beautiful surrounding with friendly people.”
P.S. Although Barry isn’t on social media himself, his daughter manages an Instagram account to showcase his work. You can follow him here.
