Mailbox

Love the mood of the vast empty space and the lonely post box!

 

Best regards, Chuck!

 

PDE

I really like the subject (wish the numbers weren't so crisp....wish they weren't there at all except perhaps handwritten on the side of the box).  One gets a sense of rural isolation, although I doubt the people living here would use the term "isolation."  I think raising the camera just a bit to remove about a foot of foreground and giving it to the clouds instead might have created an even greater sense of space.  Also as another alternative (not better or worse, just another composition), could you have stepped to the left to show more of the open road with no other buildings (or would that have shown the town's most rural subdivision)?  By the looks of the gravel road, this is not traveled very frequently at all.

I'll have to disagree with Stephen on this one, at least when it comes to the numbers below the mailbox. To me they are the key to the image and I believe the entire mood of the picture would be different without them. A picture like this always has the possibility of falling into beautiful but generic cliche. Those very graphic numbers, which somehow find an echo in the threatening grays of the distant sky, tie the image to a particular place and work against any romantic tendencies. The scope of the picture is preserved but we are reminded that this is not just a sweeping landscape but a very real place.

Jack, you're right....the entire mood of the image would be different without the numbers. That's my point. It comes down to what we know of these areas and how these areas can be portrayed.

 

I've lived in small towns much of my life, and I know these areas and the people who live in such areas in the Pacific Northwest. I've spent many summers harvesting fields of wheat, peas, onions, and asparagus. When I was in school, many of my friends and classmates lived in areas like this. So this isn't just an academic exercise for me when I look at photographs of rural areas (and the same may be true for you and many other viewers).

 

These really are isolated places, especially if the connecting road is like the one depicted here (although this may be a long driveway, perhaps used by several other families, rather than a rural road). For me, it's the isolation that is a key element in living in a remote rural area. The well-used, dented mailbox (where even the red paint has worn off the flag) on a wooden post, is a great symbol for such a lifestyle, especially when it overlooks a seldom-driven road, a field that has been tilled in preparation for the next crop, and strong weather in the skies upon which the crops and the people's livelihoods are ultimately dependent.

 

On the other hand, it's not like all of these folks are living a life of the last century, and it's not like they are fundamentally different from their friends who live in town. There's probably a satellite dish in the yard or on the roof of their house, and several vehicles (especially one or more pickup trucks) are probably parked in the driveway. They're likely living a lifestyle that is just as modern as anyone else; the only difference is that their nearest neighbor may not be within easy walking distance.

 

So I think it comes down to what one sees within a rural area that best characterizes what life is really like, and what symbols best convey that way of life in a photograph. If I take the numbers away and instead simply write them on the side of the mailbox, I'm leaving one impression. If instead I use store-bought block numbers tacked to the wooden post, I'm leaving a different impression. I could go further and find a mailbox shaped like a modern tractor on a steel post just outside a chain-link fence, and that would impart still a different impression.

 

I think it's the difference between a symbol of remote living versus a symbol of modern life despite remote living. Both are equally valid, and both are present in varying degrees in rural landscapes of the states I know best: Washington and Montana.

 

For you, a battered mailbox with hand-written numbers on a wooden post beside a gravel road may be a cliche. To me, such a photograph is a timeless reality and a real part of the great diversity in which people choose to live. We're both looking at different parts of a wide spectrum of rural life, and we're seeing (or want to see) different symbols that best represent a particular part of that spectrum in which we are most interested. I think we both have valid points of view.

 

The only part of your response that bothers me is to dismiss one representation as a cliche. I'll admit that much of what I like to see in photographs has been seen and photographed many times. I guess that unlike many others within photo.net, I don't mind compositions that have many variations on a theme that have been done by many others, as long as these compositions represent aspects of life that I consciously value and appreciate. I don't need complete originality in a photograph, if that were even possible. Some photographers may go to extremes made possible by digital manipulation and post skies of bright orange and purple, or green moss on a rock that glows even though it may be in deep shade, and they'll get comments like "Great colors!" simply because, in my opinion, the colors are so unusual, unique, and never before seen -- they are at the extreme opposite end of cliche, and they are valued by some viewers just for that reason alone.

 

Dismissing photographic compositions that are widespread in our culture and in our photographs as cliche has itself, in my opinion, become cliche. As long as the photograph resonates in some way with me, it doesn't really matter to me if I've seen a variation of it before. In a way, I'm seeing this variation for the first time, and that's usually enough originality for me. But I realize we all have different standards, so differing opinions regarding originality versus continued variations on a theme are going to exist. Even though I'm not always successful, I try to respect them all.

I like the image as it is quite a lot, but I do wish there were a little more of the stormy sky included.

I have enjoyed the conversation. And the issue of clichés comes up in my considerations too. Sometimes maybe you take a shot that's clichéd or you don't shoot something you like. So, I try not to produce grossly clichéd images, but whether or not this mail box post had a different style of letting I would have taken the picture and probably would have posted it.

BTW, I guess I got inspired to play a little in Photoshop and produces an alternate version that I'm posting here. I like both.

Chuck, the only photographs that I personally consider to often be cliches are sunsets and sunrises.  I do have a few in my own portfolio, but there is usually a mountain or some other element other than just the sun and brightly lit clouds (however, already I can recall an exception).  When a subject becomes a cliche is very, very subjective, IMO.

 

I think the issue of cliches is a secondary issue in the posts made by Jack and me.  The real issue is what the nature of the numbers does to (or for) the photograph, and on that issue I think we're in complete agreement.

!! !!