Sorry folks, I’ve missed the past 2 weeks of PotW - the first week I needed to get the bathroom done in a hurry for the 4th of July, which put PotW on hold for the next week. Also, you’ll notice I’m early - I’m hoping to get downtown so as to shoot things that aren’t in my backyard, but not sure if I’m going to get down there. If so, you’ll get a bonus PotW this Friday. But we’re back with an extra special HUGE PotW to make amends - this weeks set is a theme: Decay. I’m working on a self-portrait set, but I’m having trouble deciding what exactly I want to say with that one - generally if I don’t make self-portraits that are me hamming in front of the camera, they end up being all emo and dark. I’m not a model (you know what I mean?).
I love “old stuff” like this. I really like old barns filled with lots of rusty farm machinery. I should be able to find one of those around here if I try.
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08.07.08 at 19:12:04
Carleen Huxley
Although the last few seem to show more “decay”, I really love the first one. Nothing says decay like broken procelain. I’ll like this theme.
09.07.08 at 22:46:00
Joshua Williams
So it looks like you’re getting good levels at your black at white points without sacrificing the greys between. Are you happier with the results?
This week I favor the first photo. It has a sense of depth and dimension that separates it from the other. There’s also great depth of field, and your composition frames the scene from the bottom left nicely using shadows. The texture in the glass (and the fact that it’s not completely blown out) keeps my eye from wandering out the window. What do YOU think?
10.07.08 at 08:33:26
Mike Huxley
Yeah, my two favorite are the first one (which, for the record, the first one I post is always my personal favorite) and the lock. I actually tried to convert to a tiff and then Save as a JPEG to upload, but I couldn’t - JPEG wasn’t one of the choices, how do I go from TIFF to JPEG, because, yes, I could notice a difference in detail between the two. I’m getting good tonal range this time for two reasons: it was very sunny that day; and I had my camera set to underexpose everything, so I just adjusted the settings.
I’m digging the close crop I have in the first shot - I’m thinking I’m going to experiment with this a bit more - up until now I hadn’t realized how close I could get with my camera - until I looked at the focal distance on my lens. Tight cropping was always something I did in much of my previous work, I like how when you get close to objects they lose their “identity” and you start focusing on textures and tones. Edward Weston did a lot of that type of stuff and I always found his work mesmerizing. It became like a children’s game where you’re given a picture of a texture and you have to guess what it is.
I like the lock shot for the contrast and also the framing; I enjoy pictures that weigh heavily to one side. I like how that little dot of blackness keeps drawing my attention - it’s just this little dot, but it keeps pulling my eye away from the lock making wonder what it is. Is it a hole? Some kind of aberration? A smudge on the lens? But then I can come back to the lock and bask in lines on the lock itself, the grit of the rust on the handle. Ooh, something I just noticed, the door is slightly ajar, and the lock is off, it almost hints at some danger beyond. Is the lock on there to keep us out or to keep something in?