Stills

I really love the line, Credit Card Collection Atonement. That is so funny. It does have blacks! But it also tilts out the bottom right with the sidewalk tiles, but since the signage is parallel, must have been on a slight downward hill. I like the barrel and pole in the foreground but don't like the highlights on the upper left edge and top edge, distracting.
 

Strangeness of passage indeed.
 

I don't get the thing about the phrase Credit Card Collection Atonement. I get the impression this is the main subject so I feel a bit lost.

I creates a question for me: how is our photography related to our native language? I don't think it is related much. But then we have one here that needs to understand a language thing. I have seen that before. I even have one that also needs to understand something written.

Isn't it a kind of contradiction to have a pictorial medium bound by written language? Maybe, but in my mind not a reason not to take such pictures.

In this one I still appreciate the rigourous geometric construction, its near-symmetry broken by the two elements in the foreground.
 

Stephane, the photo is nearly entirely the text which is not only a cultural joke, but uses out of date language as well. It isn't so much that a visual medium is bound up by a verbal one, but that cities are places of words and signs. People photography wasn't going well that day and I was thinking about other ways of depicting London. It is easy to overdo photographing signs (they don't fight back), but London isn't London without the text.

Doug, I very nearly dealt with the highlight top left but decided not to. Even now I'm not sure. There are lots of slopes in this scene, but the camera is tilted back as well.

John, I had to go away and check that 'Atonement' really was a movie :-)
 

Colin, I did not mean to be rude. I agree about London and text. Every time I've been there I have marvelled at the typographic quality of mere signs. That's something I have not seen elsewhere.
 

I've been waiting for more comments on this to see if they provided more insight into the "cultural joke", but like Stephane, I will now admit I don't totally get it. I do think the image is nicely composed, if that counts for anything!
 

Stephane - no rudeness inferred. It was a valid observation.

Christina - now you have me intrigued. What say Rex and akikana?
 

Maybe I'm looking for too much -- it did strike me funny that you could pay for atonement via credit card, but when the words were all strung together as Doug did, I started to think that I was not getting the whole message. And then your comment about "out of date language" further confused me. (and today I'm easily confused to start with!)
 

This is the kind of verbal juxtaposition I find amusing but now I think about it I often photograph but don't often publish. I've just thought of my gull which I did publish, Oh and gulls can't read, perhaps I do publish them then.

So I find this interesting and fun because we are surrounded by these signs and notices to the point where they almost become transparent. We have to see and not just look in order to capture them.
 

The humour sits fine with me. I find that bin and bollard a little unsettling to the eye though. As much as I shoot deserted streets I think this would be much stronger if that bin and bollard was replaced by a solitary person. The angle of the gun would then tie the poster in much more. Save the aforementioned, there is plenty to like in this shot and the School of English is a lovely tie in too.
 

Christina - it is indeed a simple joke and nothing to look too deeply for. Perhaps made easier to understand if you realise that I had no idea that 'Atonement' was a film :-)

There is still quite an undercurrent in the UK that easy credit is a 'bad thing' and something that you will end up having to 'pay for'. I don't suppose the current generation of teenagers see it like that, but it certainly is a feature of the recent past.

'Atonement' struck me as a lovely old-fashioned sort of word. I can't imagine anybody (outside of the pulpit, perhaps) actually saying it.