Roadside Memorial

Carl, too close for home at the moment. One of our bus drivers just passed from a coronary at a school...eerie photo to come to for me.

 

the guard rail seems positioned perfect - ok the whole thing just seems extremely well captured.

 

Knicki

I often see these roadside memorials, and have thought them too morbid to photograph...but I like what you have done. The school bus makes all of the difference here. I concur with Don re:misty future....Very well captured.

I was all set to take the shot with no traffic, emphasizing the curved guardrail, but of course I'm delighted that the bus showed up. Some of these tragedies are after hours, but others are closely related to a school activity, even to the bus itself.

 

I think the subject matter honors the victims, especially given that their friends and family clearly want to make a public statement which I hope my images enhance.

Well, Carl, I'll give it a try per your request.

 

I disagree with your sometime characterization of photography as "genres," and perhaps that is why I cannot get interested in your photographs. You approach this with the goal to objectify a scene; I see relevant photography as dramaturgy. When I look at your photographs of course your technical expertise comes through very clearly. Your shots are invariably nicely framed, well-exposed, sharply focused, color-balanced, and so forth. All that is good,of course.

 

But what fails for me is why you are taking these pictures. If the goal is to document a certain "thereness" of living on the Eastern seaboard in early 21st century US, it's missing. The best I get out of it is you have a goal to create a series of visually interesting but ultimately unconnected vignettes of your environment. For me it's not interesting enough to make me want to do much more than look at each photo, say it's a nice picture, and move on. It is photography that has no secondary meaning, and little or none of the visual iconography that charges an interesting photograph with pssibilities other than objectification.

 

I picked this photo to comment on because here you quite consciously created a storyboard between two visual cues. This is the type of communication that was being done in the 1920s, and was really popularized by street photography (albeit mostly with people as the prop) by the 1950s. By now it has passed into a cliche-- and I say this not unkindly since everyone is prone to do it every once in a while. But it's nothing new.

 

What I'm trying to really say is you can't lump photography into "genres" and leave it at that. Photography is at core a communicative art. The "genre" of what you do stops at conveing to a viewer the reality of a scene; maybe an interesting confluence of angles, maybe a nicely seen set of shapes. It's a simple visual abstraction, which when done well, as yours is, makes for a pleasant picture. Nothing of any other emotion is conveyed-- no allegory, no complex abstraction, no unexplained question, really no strong point of view. Those are all things that draw me into a body of work, and that's why I'm usually so dismissive of the type of material that sits on the TRPs. I find it deeply unintelligent and plainly not interesting.

 

You have a very good eye but, and forgive me if this is wrong, you probably have very little knowledge of photographic history or photographic criticism. I think if you really asked yourself why you're shooting you would produce some sterling images. I don't mean to sound conceited, though certainly it can be read that way. I ask myself these questions all the time-- how does what I shoot fit into how I think? The questions whether a horizon is tilted, or your exposure is a little off, or crop this, crop that, those are as irrelevant as can be unless you have a clear understanding of what you're trying to say.

 

Enough blather, feel free to disregard it all.

 

Best,

Andy

The images I had in mind from this folder that I thought might interest you are from the National Gallery east wing - 'multi-level', 'strange encounter', and 'detached' and also perhaps 'river street' - in other words the images with people, although street photography doesn't necessarily need people in them, as this image proves.

 

"River Street" is a metaphor and says a lot about how I shoot. There are people who like what I shoot and even strive to emulate my style (not that it's unique; it isn't), but when they go to the same places I go, they don't or can't see the things that I do. The fact that I've won lots of camera club awards suggests that many would like to (and many have actually said as much), but my objective now is to see how far afield I can carry this style and still find a positive response.

 

Sometimes the results are moderately interesting at best and could easily be considered a cliche, but when I am lucky, I have taken shots that are unusual, if not completely original, the standard for the latter being impossibly high.

Belatedly running this through the RFC queue to satisfy future

Calvinball qualifiers. It's one of my favorites, and frankly would

like to see it take over my last POW as my representative image on

this site.

It tells a story, and tells it well.

Carl, I really do think this is one of your best photos. It has everything going for it. Mood, lots of emotion, strong contrast, a story, and exciting composition. I imagine it would also do very well as a b&w. In fact, the mood might even be enhanced in b&w.

I've presented it both ways locally and the B&W is preferred. The bus and ribbons get too much attention in color and pull the eye away from her photograph, which is easy to miss.