One thing that struck a particular chord with me, being in one of my periods of doubt about what I'm up to, was the comment that just because everything seems to have been done already it hasn't been done by you.
This was a timely and encouraging reminder. For some reason I had searched Google images for Lewis Baltz. I'd done this before and been discouraged by finding pictures of walls and piles of debris that, despite being in black and white, reminded me of some of my photographs. Despite having started photographing these subjects before seeing the Baltz pictures I had become dispirited when I first stumbled on them. However I had forgotten about them until the other day, having put them out of my mind. The best plan is undoubtedly to do what you want to do even if someone else has already done it. Even if your photos don't make the grade they can lead you somewhere new.
I had been planning on writing something here about perspective a couple of days ago. This morning I opened up Eric Weight's latest journal entry today to see he had mentioned one aspect of it. The way mist can gradually soften the appearance of things as they recede into the distance.
My intention had been to compare the ways the two pictures below suggest space within the picture frame.
Both of these pictures were made with the blocks of complimentary colours in mind. Maybe subconsciously I had also seen that the warmer blocks were closer to the lens than the cooler ones. The left hand picture uses aerial perspective to suggest space (distant objects are hazier than closer ones) while the right hand picture uses linear perspective (objects that are the same size in reality appearing smaller as they recede). That one has a shallow depth of field and one is in greater focus enhances each picture's reliance on it's means of describing space.
With thoughts of imitation and coincidence in my mind walked to the Post Office this morning, camera round my neck set to shoot in black and white. Quite what I was going to shoot I had no clue but I wanted to work in monochrome. It had rained overnight and I saw a dry patch where a car had stood on the drive of a house I passed. I took a couple of shots thinking it had something about it. Then I realised that I had seen more of these dry patches and that they had a melancholy feel to them. At the risk of becoming pretentious they seemed somehow melancholy. On my way home I photographed each dry patch I saw.
Ordinarily I impatiently upload pictures as soon as I get in, but today I was a good little boy and did some paying work first. Only when that was out of the way in the late afternoon did I see what I had got. Loaded into Lightroom, and edited down (some I shot in landscape and portrait format) I found I had precisely 20 shots which worked as a coherent series. There were some which stood as single images, but the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts. I processed the files then made a simple Blurb book which I uploaded and ordered. The physical collection, and time, will tell if my initial judgement is to be trusted. Right now it feels like this spur of the moment project has succeeded.
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