Sentimental Photo
Marina called. She got the 8x10 print I sent her. It was a picture of her grandmother’s house in Texas. It’s on a patch of land between two railroad lines. Nobody lives there now, but several members of her family lived there at one time or another. The house and several outbuildings are suffering from disrepair. If I have my facts straight, the city wants to settle the matter - as in flatten it. There is a big pile of old tires that can’t be safe. I got pictures of a tire on top of a barn roof with a cactus peeking out from the tire - but I warn you that the light was bad, and the angle that worked best for the roof put the tire/cactus in the shadow of a big tree. I took a bunch of interesting pictures around the old house (well, they were interesting to _me_ at least), but none of them seemed particularly good. One day we were previewing them on my laptop screen, and Marina responded well to the photo of the front of the house with flowering trees. “Could you get rid of the old cars and make a print? I want to give it to my Aunt for her birthday.”
Well, I was a few days late, but nobody cared about that. The photo went over well as a present, and suddenly more people covet a copy. So I rounded up some pictures Marina’s been asking me for - a few good ones of her son Greg, some interesting tidbits from the trip, and some barn animals from my Aunt & Uncle’s farm in Ohio. I got crafty in Photoshop with some color balance, saturation, and sharpening filters. I tried not to go overboard - some of them looked a little off when I previewed them on a different screen at work. I might have another look at them today to make sure I didn’t go crazy.
The photo of her Grandmother’s house didn’t strike me, but I understand the sentimental value of an image. I was looking for something and didn’t find it. Maybe you could call it composition, but I look for what I would call “situational irony of the subject”. And, when I show this kind of thing to people, they think I’m more than a little but weird. So, I like the old cars in the driveway. I like the riot of vegetation next to falling down buildings. I like graffiti on trains, and I like industrial ruins.
On the other hand, I hate it when somebody talks about a photo that they don’t offer up for inspection - I just noticed how much I was doing that. I’m going to stick to photos from the same brief interval, and I’ll give the others their due at a more appropriate time. Stay tuned…
Posted by Evan Bittner Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:04:00 GMT
