“Dark Skies,” featuring the night photography of Scott Krycia, continues through Dec. 21, Rotunda Gallery, Town Hall, Bethlehem.

The works were photographed in areas not affected by light pollution.

One of these, “Ghosts” (2022; stacked image consisting of 325 exposures on aluminum print, 20 in. x 30 in.) creates the illusion of motion among stars on a clear March sky over Rhyolite, Nev., a ghost town bordering the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park. The stars appear to swirl behind the gutted ruins of a masonry bank building.

The illusion is created by the rotation of the Earth as the built-in intervalometer in Krycia’s Nikon digital camera automatically clicks away. He usually sets up cameras in three nearby locations to capture the skyscapes over a three- to four-hour period.

“I usually go for about 600 frames,” says Krycia. “Then out of the 600 frames, I pick 300 or so that I like.” He rejects images marred by airplanes and, as he says, “Elon Musk’s satellites,” that inevitably wind up in many of the exposures.

“All those stars get stacked on top of each other in Photoshop,” Krycia says. “That’s what gives it the effect of the motion of the stars.”

Most of the work in the exhibit was taken with multiple exposures. A few, such as “Arches” (2023; aluminum print, 20 in. x 30 in.), are images captured in one shot. Photographed in May 2023 in Arches National Park, Utah, Krycia’s lens records the visual drama of the Milky Way during a meteor shower hovering over the Shiprock formation.

Born in Hellertown, the Bethlehem-based self-taught photographer usually travels to the West Coast or the Adirondacks “where the dark skies are.”

After receiving an Associates in video production broadcast communications at Northampton Community College, Krycia pursued a career as a commercial photographer. His night sky work became an extension of his landscape photography 15 years ago.

The Rotunda exhibition is sponsored by the Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission and is presented in coordination with the ArtsQuest InVision program.

“Dark Skies,” through Dec. 21, Rotunda Gallery, Town Hall, 10 E. Church St., Bethlehem. Gallery hours: 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday-Friday, Closed weekends and holidays. Information: www.bfac-lv.org

“Gallery View” is a column about artists, exhibitions and galleries. To request coverage, email: Paul Willistein, Focus editor, pwillistein@tnonline.com