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«acid drops II»
It has been bugging me for a while, that there has to be much more than blurring in the lens. While I have liked the results with Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, and other applications of such a technique, it also opened up for something to continue. Frank Gehry's recent buildings are perhaps the easiest to learn how to tame the "blurred in the lens" approach that does not involve a consistent "focused at twice infinity" concept for emphasizing the form, as pursued by Hiroshi Sugimoto.
The blurring to obtain the lines is the first step in this approach I take. The second one is to dodge and burn (locally) to enhance the shapes. In a way, it is un-blurring some detail but still in the form of a shape. This may be best exemplified with the photos of the Flat Iron building, where I burned and dodged to bring out the silhouettes from the windows.
Aside from this emphasis, there was something else that the technique could bring, especially in the Frank Gehry case. The smoothness of the segments was crying out for some texture, but noise was too much of cliché, and not really apt. The gradients in light caused by his non-flat surfaces (and photographed late in the day), would serve another purpose. The Flat Iron building still gives a sense of scale, but the Gehry photos do not: this is when it struck me that an overlay of another image would be something to try.
At first, it was a way to enhance the Gehry image with some subtle detail from another scale, as in a close or macro image, rich in detail and texture. As I worked on the image above, I realized that it was forcing me to look at it more as a symbiosis. That is, the Gehry abstract gained from the texture offered by the rusty-iron abstract, and the rusty-iron abstract gained from the light gradients to be painted differently than the natural rusty red. Furthermore, the light shapes from the Gehry image made brings a sense of mutual harmony to both.
An appeal of this technique, in having practiced with an entirely different image, «Paris and Rome» that has both images with much detail, is that it is not a script: each image must be processed individually, with an abstract/imaginative idea guiding what it is done. In any exploration, I am worried of coming to a technique that involves some (clever) button being pushed, as it almost feels with blurring in the lens.
«tinseltown in the rain»
In a strange way, inspired by Blade Runner, I have begun to wander downtown Los Angeles a bit more. After all, it is rather convenient to step out of the apartment and just walk. I know that there is a gentrification of downtown in the works, and I am part of it, that will change this decaying area in ways that can be hard to anticipate, but there is already hints about what will happen.
However, the main point here is that of attachment. So far, in my photography, there is an idea of looking where people usually do not. There is a post-photo idea of expressing some emotion about the (usually) atypical subject matter or angle, and that is just layers of what I want to express. In other words, the photo becomes an abstraction of something that people may not often care to look at, or even photograph -- at least I have the «Old San Juan» series, or the «Dying Beach» series in mind. This abstraction moves the image into my imagination and there is no emotional attachment to the subject, as in influencing where I go and what I photograph. I just wander around and see something.
This is not the case with downtown Los Angeles. The contrast is just too high in this area of the city. There is the Gehry Building and the ensuing series «Sketches of Gehry», which fits into the mold of the detachment expressed. However, the historic downtown has a more emotional connection, and as such, it is more problematic. The issues that arise so far with portraits are creeping into photographing this area. It is a bit like the doctor becoming involved with the patient, and that is going to affect treatment. In that sense, the same is happening here, whereas in the past locating "good texture" meant a number of takes with multiple angles, lenses, etc. goes ignored here. Not only that, I am venturing more into street photography, though no results to show yet. Also, I am walking around with an older camera and a prime lens (50mm), which is a different animal to me at this point. This focal lens (80mm equivalent in the digital camera), makes some shots rather difficult to take because to the narrowness of alleys or streets.
Although I will not be able to walk downtown next weekend, I am already anticipating doing more of it in the subsequent weekends. Knowing that I will not be here for the completion of the "makeover" seems to make it more interesting to capture what I can at this point, and try to either embrace or divorce the doctor-patience relationship.
