Things you don't realise

Something that is often seen as a positive element in a photograph is a visual echo. I was reading an essay on Walker Evans last night and it mentioned a visual echo which I hadn't noticed before. When I was showing some of my old photos to someone last week they picked up on an echo I hadn't noticed at the time, nor in the intervening years since I took the shot. It makes me wonder if it had been subconsciously seen.

The photograph is by no means in the same league as the Evans echo of oval porch feature and black eye, it's no more than a casual snap, but the checks on coat and tiles are an echo even so.

 On the subject of snaps the one below almost got something by accident. I was trying to grab a shot of the 'back in five minutes' not on the door, missing it by a  split second. The idea was self referential one of a photograph of a shop selling photographs. Yeah, I know...

What I almost got was my reflection adding sufficient contrast to the woman's face to make it clear, rather than washed out by the reflections in the glass. That would have been something to lift the picture and give it another level of interest. If I'd got the hand still on the tape rather than the door handle, and the red of the lips more prominent to echo the red of the door (an echo I think I must have spotted) then it could have been something more than it is. That's the problem with shots snapped quickly. Or in this case not quickly enough as I saw the picture but had to take half a step after realising it. By which time I had missed the moment.

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