Leaves

This week's theme is leaves. Leaves influence our everyday lives. You see leaves can be found pretty much everywhere. In fact, Ah, nevermind. I'm stationed in New York. The whole thing is a moot point for me. There hasn't been vegetation here since Harrison was President. Moving on. This first picture has a couple of elements that I really like. Firstly, the two bleak colors, Brown and Gray; and the loneliness of the leaf. I think both factors play a role in setting up the base of the picture. Additionally, this being Autumn and all there's that whole symbolic theme as well. The dying plants and dreary skies. This picture almost encapsulates the season by itself. The dead, fallen leaf, all alone, backdropped by a bleak slate of gray. The long and cold winter has not set in yet, but the leaf is almost completely gone, a couple more weeks, and it will all be over. Autumn signifies the eminent death, Spring symbolizes hope; it's even in Pope's quip, "Hope springs eternal" (Any English people in the crowd? You know you're a lost cause when you make puns about 17th century British literature).
Besides the colors and leaf placement, there are some other things that I think create big impacts. One, in the back of the picture you'll notice some big cracks in the pavement. I have no idea what effect this has to the picture, but I feel like it has more than a little impact. Two, the shadow underneath the leaf is obviously a major factor, but there are other shadows laying across the picture. I think this becomes interesting as well because it forces the "what's outside the picture" issue. Third, the lighting and shades of coloring attract attention as well. The shadows are the cause of some of the different shades of color, however without me explaining that they were shadows, it would be a left up to the observer to wonder what the discoloration was. Case in point, the foreground is darker and I don't think it has anything to do with the shadows.

This picture is in total contrast to the previous picture. The color is vibrant. I like how there are only the two colors. It has such a magnificent beauty, yet it is somewhat simple. The two colors provide all the life, yet they provide so much life. There is no sign of Autumn here, this picture could be taken in mid-summer or spring. To come clean, this picture is not completely real. I don't mean I doctored it, I mean I took it in a corporate parking lot. As always, the money makers of the country try to find the best selling season of the year, and exploit it for 12 months. Apparently, the book store involved here feels that summer or spring gets people to purchase books and coffee. "Corporate America: destroying one natural feel good moment at a time."




These pictures are great. First off, I gotta say I love a nice rain. Not torrential flooding/goodbye house rain; but a nice thunderstorm, a hard rain, a drizzle, a mist, whatever I don't care, rain rocks. I like the smell of it, the sound, the feeling, all of it. Anyway, seeing a drop of rain, or any liquid for that matter always seemed cool to me. The solitary drop of moisture. So to see and capture the drops of rain on the leaves is great for me. The bigger picture especially is cool, because it has that pool on the bottom of the leaf. The fragility of the whole thing is really amazing. That drop fell thousands of feet and landed on the leaf, yet by breathing to hard next to it, it'll roll down the leaf and join in with another drop or two, and if the momentum is too strong that big new drop will roll right off. Maybe that's what I like so much about the drops of rain on the leaves, it symbolizes a sense of delicate innocence. So fragile, so natural, so serene. This is the part of the nature video where the narrator gets quiet, a predator flies out of no where chomps down hard, maims the baby, crushes its head, and drags it back to the den for dinner, while the monotone voiceover speaks about a statistical anomaly and the exacting forces that run this ecosystem. Whatever nature man. Let me ogle at the baby elephant in peace. Save the lion hunt for HBO. Sadist.

Lucky

These next couple of pictures are all shots that I got extremely lucky with. Either the shot happened without me knowing it would or I just happened to be standing at a great angle. This first picture is the best example. I was sitting in traffic somewhere in the city and I randomly decided to take shots of the stores. This cab pulled up as I took a picture of the bank to make it look like it was "mentos mint bank". I tried to get the drivers attention to thank him, but I'm pretty sure he thought my arm waving was some form of body-language expletive. His loss.



This next picture was just weird. I still have no idea what that billboard is for, but the whole demon baby thing is kinda freaky. The slight use of "thirds" makes the picture more visually pleasant. Even though it isn't perfectly thirds, it it is still orderly, as opposed to the next picture. It isn't just a picture of Satan's child, it is a stark contrast of gray-blue, green, and red. The Tan building lessens this effect a little, but I think it is still present enough to attract the eye. The eyes of the demon draw the eye as well. Where is it looking? At us? The complete abstractness and the color contrast are what make this picture. Additionally, the orderliness of the picture contrasted to the demon and its eyes make for a confused feeling.







This bottom picture is a case of "right place at the right time". Every escalator in this building was lit up with these crazy neon side lights. If you've ever been inside this building (it's a landmark) you'll understand that a man in a suit is a rare breed to find. Catching this formally dressed man in a hurry (Notice he is somewhat blurry, his eyes are looking down, his feet are in motion, both hands are holding on, and his clothes are swaying somewhat. You can tell he was in quick motion.) in this fantasy land made the image almost surreal. I was thinking of taking a shot of the escalators anyway, but with him in the middle, the whole thing took on a new idea. He becomes both the literal and figurative center of this picture. The picture becomes about him not the escalator. His solitude in the picture becomes something to think about as well. Nothing serious necessarily, but something to mull over.

The symmetry involved is also something to talk about. The picture is half symmetrical (The green to yellow lights, the stairs on either side, the middle of the picture being divided by the two black stripes) yet half chaotic (the pipes above the escalators are running askew, there are no lights on the right side, the angle of the picture makes it seem like the left escalator ends a little higher - notice its black handle to the one next to it, not to mention the man on one side and not the other.). I think this causes a disturbing occurrence for the eyes. If it were completely one way or the other it would be fine, but to have a mix of the two is unsettling. Either be neat and orderly or let havoc reign.

Pavement

The theme for this weeks posting is perspective. By perspective, I mean that the perspective of each picture is below ankle level. Either the camera (and my head) is on the ground or held right above the ground. It should be said that I did not go out and decide to take a photo-shoot from the ground. Looking back at 200 pictures I took this week, I found the pattern.

The picture to the left is a normal house in a suburb outside of West Philadelphia. Right off the bat the picture catches attention due to the perspective/angle. The house is the focus though, not the ground in front (as opposed to later the later pictures).
An added element that I found interesting, is that every person imagines a different surroundings for the scene outside the borders of the picture. I see the picture and I place it in the neighborhood and the block where I found it, but someone unfamiliar to the area has no frame of reference. This has specific ramifications for what is inside the picture as well. How big is the house? With the tree in the way only a view from a different angle can tell. Is there a street between the camera and the house? The wood contrasting to the bushes might suggest that one runs horizontally. But the pavement running along the left side of the picture might be a street as well. Only another perspective can answer.



This is another neighborhood picture, though obviously the elimination of any outside indicators can place it in any climate changing area. That's what makes this picture I think. It's just the leaves and the ground. The tree's aren't even pictured. In addition the leaves, for the most part are dead, or on there way there, yet the picture isn't ugly. Kind of a modern day painting of autumn, with the blacktop pavement replacing the dirt and grass. I'm sure some teen-angst poem could be written about it. Something along the lines of nothing but the dead and dying, the morbidity being so beautiful, and all this agony backdropped by man's own invention. I dunno, I'm putting it out there. Take it or leave it.

The focus is on the front leaves with a progressive lack of detail heading toward the back of the picture. This picture could probably have been taken from any part of this area and shown the same image. The beauty of a tree covered lawn in fall.




There is a lot I like a about this picture. I'm not sure what strikes the eye first, the lines going ad infinitum or the glare of the lights. The fact that this is taken from between the yellow lines is a little abstract, and adds flavor. The focus is on the ground next to the camera, and as such the detail of the pavement is pretty clear while the lights above, which normally garner more detail, become secondary.
The contrast between the lights and pavement is the focal point of this picture. The lights, being "light" attract more attention without any help from angle and perspective. In fact the rest of the pictures I took that night were of the lights, this picture though came out the best. Without the angle and placement of the picture, the lines would lose their prominence in the picture. An interesting test in eye-attraction and picture real-estate.

Train Station

This is a shot from "Septa track 3" at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. The monotony of the tracks was ironically the beauty. You can see that the same Ad is posted on every track, next to the same benches and poles. In theory it should be a very dreary place but the lighting and architecture give it somewhat of a majestic presence instead. The repetitiveness of the the same shadows, ads, even the bleached out buildings in the background is amazing. I like how the picture makes you wonder about what's behind the photographer, or maybe, how long can this process go on for?
The light really made this picture. It was early afternoon and the sun was out. The shadows, the brightness and the background buildings are all accentuated in this picture because of the daylight. This same picture would be entirely different at night or say even dusk. Not necessarily bad, but different.


This next picture is of the roof. At first I didn't really like this picture because I didn't feel like it really captured the atmosphere, but it's grown on me. The monotony is evident again, and again somewhat majestic. Looking at the picture now, it seems like sitting in an overturned ship with the sky as the water, like a glass bottomed submarine. Something I really like about this picture that you can't see from the first one is the humanization. This picture shows the people in the station but is too unfocused to personalize it. I think that adds a touch of something for the viewer that gives it a different feel. While the first might seem more abstract, this one maybe transports the viewer to a majestic and impersonal train station.

The fact that no train is pictured in either photo is key as well. I think that a train station is so universally pictured that everyone basically knows what they are looking at without being told. Its a sense of subtleness that adds to the picture as well.



This last picture is the last of this set, but is in a totally different vein. More of a symbolic type then a vision/imaginary one. The billboard advertises "America's Next Top Model", a bad network's symbolization of the American Dream and Western Societies indulgence in utter shallowness. Sort of a poorman's MTV.
I enjoy the irony of the billboard set up against a backdrop of an industrial field with a smoke tower, electrical towers, and train tracks, the nitty and gritty of societies necessities. The working man who put that up had to be smiling at the bigger than life sized "anorexia-worked-for-me" cellophane spokesmodels and thinking, "Oh, if you could only see yourself now".
Running the "broken record" risk, I have to say that the lighting changes this picture as well. You'll notice the shadow across the bottom half of the picture, which covers the billboard and the sun shining on the smoke stack and electrical towers. It accentuates the tower and minimizes the billboard, drawing the eye to focus on the stack more than it already would. In terms of pictorial real estate I think the mainstay of the picture is the tower while the billboard and the women are only secondary, which again draws the eye to the stack first, adding more irony to the picture. Somewhere the working-man-god is smiling.