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Two Sides of a Small City (Please click on photo to view larger)


Landrum Kelly



ISO 3200
f/3.5
I forget the shutter speed .
Manual exposure, handheld
focal length 18mm on a 1.5x crop sensor camera

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Landscape

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I love this!  The abstract fire escape and the red glow in the background just set everything off perfectly.  It's a color 'film noir'!

 

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It's a color 'film noir'!

 

Nice play on words, Diane. 

 

You write the screenplay for it, and I'll see if I can't get some "Indy' to produce it.

 

--Lannie

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You sometimes get your best shots when your photographic mind is a tabula rasa and you are just able to 'see' whatever appears in front of you.

 

If as a photographer you are too singleminded about what you are going to take, a world class photo opportunity (this is pretty darned good) could be right in front of you and you might easily miss it.

 

Cartier-Bresson's famous exhortation was 'don't go looking for photos, they'll come to you', but of course, none of us has his extraordinary gifts for 'seeing' and and perceiving the great photo opportunity, taking that split second (at times) capture, and doing so at such a record basis.

 

And of course, he was his usual hypocritical self, as he frequently violated his own advice and went looking for photos. 

 

But he was unusually picky about what he'd take, those who've seen his original captures tell us.

 

I once viewed his top 2,000 captures on display on the Magnum Photography agency web site where they were for sale, and man, there were lots of technically OK ones, but lots of ones that carried little or no photographic weight or water. 

 

They were just him exercising his vision, and keeping in practice, I think, as the photos were pretty worthless to my view except as historical footnotes. (I haven't looked recently, they may still be there, but I doubt it given his estate's interest in displaying his work.)


This really is a very, very good photo; one to be proud of for a lifetime. 

 

In a way, it is allegorical and speaks to the facade that is in each of us and throughout our existences speaks to the facades we encounter throughout life as we encounter others then look to the darkness behind. 

 

It has -- to my mind broad philosophical ramifications --  maybe that's just me being introspective? 

 

I don't think so, however.

 

john

John  (Crosley)

 

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You are too kind, John, but, since I am in need of a boost, I will take your words as encouragement to keep shooting.

 

John, I have to admit that I saw no philosophical ramifications at the time I took it.  I increasingly began to see more about the photo and societal implications as I processed it (including a critical crop), and that evolving vision affected what I put in or left out of the crop--and what I brought in and left out with subsequent processing (although nothing was cloned in or removed so obviously except by routine processing decisions--and the most radical thing I did there was to use a bit of curves and levels, as well as boost the saturation).

 

As for philosophical and societal implications, I can also say that the mural is a facade--and ALL BUT ONE OF THE FIGURES IS WHITE.  Chew on that one for a while. . . .

 

I can say that I knew going over there that I might shoot the fire escape, since I had shot it before.  That was not the only possibility, but it was surely right up there with raindrops in puddles.  However, the only other shot I have of it was taken in daytime and gave a very different effect:

 

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=11214621

 

You said of HCB:

 

 

I once viewed his top 2,000 captures on display on the Magnum Photography agency web site where they were for sale, and man, there were lots of technically OK ones, but lots of ones that carried little or no photographic weight or water.

 

 

 

I have heard something like that before, perhaps from you, perhaps from Fred Goldsmith.  In any case, it is certainly the case that from almost anyone what stays with us are a few really good shots.  One moral of that is to shoot more, I think!  Marc Gouguenheim once told me that I took too many pictures.  That was back in the days when I was living on the Mennonite farm near Due West, SC so that I could get more nature photos--and get away from city life.

 

I am convinced that, if I ever were to shoot a significant body of work, I would have to shoot a lot--and probably discard a much higher percentage than most people.  Whether Marc was right or not, I do POST too many.  I know that most of them are worse than mediocre, and I know that, even if they mean something to me because I took them (because I remember the day, that is), they are going to leave other persons shaking their heads.

 

When I want inspiration, John, I usually go to your work.  Thank you for coming to mine, and thank you for the encouraging words.  I was not even sure when I went to bed last night whether I liked it, although I began to wish that I had shot it on a better low-light camera than the D90, due to shadow noise at high ISO.  Even the D7000 is supposed to be a lot better, but so far the best low-light camera I have ever used has been the Canon 5D II.  (I needed more ISO in order to hand-hold it.  It was still raining a bit, and I had no desire to put that camera out in the rain.)

 

Of course, equipment doesn't matter--except when it does.

 

--Lannie

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This is very appealing (6) and it is a study in contrasts - dark vs light. The light on the fire escape is simply delicious against the black but polished with a sulky sombre red on the left. This again contrasts with the 'light' mood on the right side.

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Here is a shot that I made of the mural during the daytime in 2008, with a man walking in front of it.

 

The point in the case of the linked photo was  more obviously about racial discrimination and its legacy in the South.  Please notice the expressions on the persons in the mural, even though I am using their smiles for fictional--and yet "real"--purposes, as if they were smirking at the appearance of the African-American male, who of course was a real man who just happened to be walking in front of the mural when I shot it.

 

My apologies go to all of the good citizens of Salisbury who modeled for the painting of the mural, having no idea to what purpose I might put their painted images.  On the other hand, for whoever designed and painted the mural, may I ask why blacks are so conspicuously lacking in the mural? Only one black woman appears in the top right background.  The absence is even more obvious if one looks at larger pictures of the mural, as in the following photo, or in the inline photos below in the discussions.

 

It is as if blacks do not exist in Salisbury, but they do.

 

--Lannie

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It is ART, Lannie! You saw a great vantage point dividing the building on half. It's very much illustrative and graphic, and in that style works very well! 

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Even without being able to tell the racial makeup of the people in the mural (in this specific photograph), there is an interesting contrast between the mural as an idealized vision of the past, and the reality of the brick wall and fire escape (hidden a bit more in the dark).  Very nice work here.

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This is a great picture, Lannie, that I somehow managed to miss when you first posted it; it's certainly worthy of all the comments it has received. It has a wonderful feeling of theatricality and seems to show us the world of illusion created for the audience on stage while simultaneously revealing the very different and far more graphic, workaday reality that exists behind the scenes.
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Outstanding image. An allegory about our souls, what we show and what we might hide, about our society and its contradictions, about the hypocrisy around us.

Bravo

 

Ps. 1)Into my favorites, thanks for sharing.

      2) I hope you don't mind showing what i would have cept leaving imagination to complete the rest of the image.

25545554.jpg
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