Wednesday, September 13, 2006
313 (02930125)
One of the first from my new D80. I'm staying with my girlfriend's parents in an old Midwest railroad and river town, so there's tons of abandoned and decaying buildings downtown along with at least one really good coffee place that also has a rocking beer selection :-) Between the coffee, the beer and all the old buildings, I've got a lot of photographic inspiration.
Permalink / posted by and copyright of matt~ : 8:16 PM
Comments:
Matt, this is the kind of photograph I'm drawn to. Both viewing and making. There's just something about old wood and flaking paint that I find hard to resist. I've taken many but only put up one on my site, though I'm not sure why.
If this is door 313 does that mean it's an exception or are there 312 other doors in this wonderful state?
I've just been for an eye test (need glasses for screen use) so this might not be a problem but my eyes detect a slight sharpness issue.
Let's guess at the colour of the paint. I'm saying green.
I'd like to think I'd have spotted this as an SLR picture. There is something about the framing and the directness of vision that suggests mild tele SLR. But I knew about the D80 from your blog and your intro, so I can't tell whether I'm deluding myself.
The thing I'm drawn to here is not the peeling paint but the number. Both what we would now call the font and particularly the size. This is a number intended to be seen from some distance. Nobody getting to this door would get close only to turn away because it isn't no. 312. It also suggests a loud (confident/brash) culture. There won't be many doors in Britain with numbers this big. There aren't streets wide enough to need them, and anyway we would feel more comfortable hiding behind something much more shrinking.
John, chalk the softness up to learning a new workflow. I'll give this another shot and post an alternate version. I'd have to find the street again to tell you if there are 312 other doors, but I'm betting not. BTW, the original color was an interesting light blue.
Auspicious, you might be right about the framing and the directness of vision, something which might have been enhanced by cropping. I haven't used an SLR much for a long time, so it will be interested to see if there's a shift in my style at all.
The number is indeed large, and this is definitely a confident culture; lots of backbone of the nation feeling in evidence. The width of the streets and the size of the downtown building evince a time when the town was far more prosperous. The scale is quite a change from Korea.
It was the incongruity of what appears to be a small door with such a large set of numbers that appealed to me. It is that number that lifts this out of the normal genre of flaky doors for me.
John E, can you elaborate on both points. The white frame is an attempt to give some continuity between digital shots and film shots, which get a border via scanning.
Rex, I didn't know flaky door shots constituted a full blow genre, but I'm glad this transcends it.
This photo is kind of a departure for me. I've been pondering over Colin's initial comment about directness of vision, and reflecting on what that means in relation to this photo and the others I've taken with the D80. I can't tell if the difference is down to a difference in available subjects or an actual shift in perspective.
My first point was rather too elliptical a way of saying that I like context, so a door frame would have been a useful start.
In general I find frames redundant when the digital background is coloured and toned to show photos off as well as possible. The frame on this one hit me immediately. One reason is that the dark strip on the left, just inside the frame creates a strip effect. Another reason is the copyright writing, which distracts. I'm not sure why continuity is needed though?
Something has changed though as your comments about this place are very different from those in Korea. A cultural shift has obviously taken place.
John, thanks for elucidating. I actually cropped out the door frame in order to fix some perspective issues, but perhaps in doing so, I compromised the photo. Reaching for something that wasn't there etc.
I'll give some thought to the border issue. I often feel like borderless photos just melt into the page. The copyright notice is an addition based on a couple of my photos recently getting embeded on other people's pages without attribution. Not the end of the world, and I know this isn't a cure all solution, but it's something.
Matt - don't forget that both points are my POV and don't necessarily reflect that of others. I take a very cavalier attitude to copyright and know that others take it more seriously. But I use 650 pixels on my site reckoning that nobody is going to get much out of that when it comes to printing.
It looks a little flat to me. I would also like to see a much wider crop so I can gauge some of the buildings these doors lead in to. I think as a series it's a good componenet (albeit with some darkroom manipulation) but not on its own.
I'm not very fond of the white frame either, but it is a choice that falls within the artistic realm. The copyright text, however, I find distracting and it can spoil my appreciation of a photograph (although much worse when splashed across the middle of an image, obviously).
I too am fairly cavalier with copyright (for my own work, I hasten to add), and figure that nobody much is going to make any money out of my 500 or 650 pixel images. If they are sad enough to want to claim the work as their own, then I figure that they have big enough problems that I don't want to know them.
I decided that I would rather present the images on my site to the best possible viewing standard (given the inherent limitations of the medium) and not get into to much of a sweat if somebody abuses them.
The big photo hosting sites are pretty good at banning members who steal photos if somebody spots it. The only real way of dealing with the embedding problem is to periodically change all the picture addresses, but who could be bothered?
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If this is door 313 does that mean it's an exception or are there 312 other doors in this wonderful state?
I've just been for an eye test (need glasses for screen use) so this might not be a problem but my eyes detect a slight sharpness issue.
Let's guess at the colour of the paint. I'm saying green.
The thing I'm drawn to here is not the peeling paint but the number. Both what we would now call the font and particularly the size. This is a number intended to be seen from some distance. Nobody getting to this door would get close only to turn away because it isn't no. 312. It also suggests a loud (confident/brash) culture. There won't be many doors in Britain with numbers this big. There aren't streets wide enough to need them, and anyway we would feel more comfortable hiding behind something much more shrinking.
Auspicious, you might be right about the framing and the directness of vision, something which might have been enhanced by cropping. I haven't used an SLR much for a long time, so it will be interested to see if there's a shift in my style at all.
The number is indeed large, and this is definitely a confident culture; lots of backbone of the nation feeling in evidence. The width of the streets and the size of the downtown building evince a time when the town was far more prosperous. The scale is quite a change from Korea.
Rex, I didn't know flaky door shots constituted a full blow genre, but I'm glad this transcends it.
This photo is kind of a departure for me. I've been pondering over Colin's initial comment about directness of vision, and reflecting on what that means in relation to this photo and the others I've taken with the D80. I can't tell if the difference is down to a difference in available subjects or an actual shift in perspective.
In general I find frames redundant when the digital background is coloured and toned to show photos off as well as possible. The frame on this one hit me immediately. One reason is that the dark strip on the left, just inside the frame creates a strip effect. Another reason is the copyright writing, which distracts. I'm not sure why continuity is needed though?
Something has changed though as your comments about this place are very different from those in Korea. A cultural shift has obviously taken place.
I'll give some thought to the border issue. I often feel like borderless photos just melt into the page. The copyright notice is an addition based on a couple of my photos recently getting embeded on other people's pages without attribution. Not the end of the world, and I know this isn't a cure all solution, but it's something.
I too am fairly cavalier with copyright (for my own work, I hasten to add), and figure that nobody much is going to make any money out of my 500 or 650 pixel images. If they are sad enough to want to claim the work as their own, then I figure that they have big enough problems that I don't want to know them.
I decided that I would rather present the images on my site to the best possible viewing standard (given the inherent limitations of the medium) and not get into to much of a sweat if somebody abuses them.
The big photo hosting sites are pretty good at banning members who steal photos if somebody spots it. The only real way of dealing with the embedding problem is to periodically change all the picture addresses, but who could be bothered?