Paul Lester Photo

In the background is a paper mill, whose name escapes me, but whose smell never does. I work about one block to the left of that paper mill and when the wind blows that way, well, let’s just say that it is unpleasant. If you’ve never smelled a paper mill, then I cannot describe it to you. If you have, you never forget. I live about 12 miles to the north of the plant, but when the wind shifts that way, you can certainly smell it 12 miles away.

I’ve wanted to take a picture of it many times, and have; however, I didn’t get a shot that I wanted. Sometimes, it actually looks quite pretty, like in the evening when the sun is gleaming off of the polished stainless steel chemical containers. Beautiful, in an industrial type of way.

Today, as I was preparing to take a few photos in Riverfront Park, I noticed this little fellow sitting along the railing. I thought that it would make a good environmental portrait, so I eased around him to frame him between the smoke stacks. I think that it came out well.

I finally got the shot that I wanted. I wasn’t trying to make a statement with this shot, I don’t think, but I do think that it shows what this little fellow has to put up with, from us, on a daily basis. Maybe I was trying to say something …

In his most recent post, here, Doug Stockdale said:

I just wanted to get a visualization of my feelings of detachment, separation anxiety, loneliness and sadness that occasionally came with my extensive travel. It is not a memoir, although it does have autobiographical elements, I want to create the experiences. You don’t have to go mad to be able to write about madness, eh?

He was talking about his most recent project, Insomnia: Hotel Noir. This particular post really hit home because it’s what I feel from time to time. Also, I know that I want to explore this photographically, but am not quite sure which way to go. Mind you, I’m not feeling all melancholy, but the constant change, every weekend, is a bit unsettling. I start to feel like I have no place to call home. There’s only a Monday-Thursday night stop, then a Friday-Sunday night stop, then the loop repeats.

No. I don’t feel sorry for myself, but it is interesting to me to look around and try to capture that feeling visually. A typical Friday for me is to get up, make sure that the kitchen is clean, gather all of my dirty clothes, suitcase, etc. and put them into the car. Leaving work at about 4:00 PM, I get onto I-26, which is always jam packed with traffic for the first 5 or 6 exits. Around about 5:30 or so, I arrive in Columbia, SC, where I stop at exit 5 off of I-77 and grab some Chick-Fil-A. Next stop, NC. I roll into the driveway around 7:30 PM, greet the dog, who is always the first one to the door, greet the wife, and sometimes even Tony, when he’s home.

Sunday night, a small bit of anxiety creeps in, as I know that it is nearing bedtime and almost time to leave. 5:00 AM signals the time to get up, get dressed, and head back down the road. I try to switch up the routine and stop in a different place for gas, etc. but as the routine is so pat, I seem to stop in the same place, get hungry at the same time, and see the same people. Excellent material for a series, I think.

Monday-Thursday, consists of working, coming home, browsing the blogs that I read, practicing a bit of my harmonica, perhaps watching a bit of TV, then off to slumber land. Although we talk on the phone, daily, I miss the in-person conversations with my wife. We talk a lot. I can handle a lot of alone time. I’m not one that needs to be around a constant crowd. My very good friend, Richard, keeps me company sometimes. We talk on the phone several times per week for quite a bit. Most of the times it’s very light-hearted and I usually end up laughing quite a bit. He has an interesting take on life!

Somehow, I’ll want to capture these moments … for personal reasons. They are interesting, to me. I look forward to seeing what Doug puts into his series. Not to copy it, but to see what his experience is and what he found important to include.

I’ve heard many times that you “should not” crop your pictures, but should get them right the first time, in camera. To that ‘rule’, I politely say: Hooey! There are, I find, many times when the in-camera crop is fine, but if you look a bit deeper, you can see other, different ‘pictures’ that you might not have considered at the time, and these are no less important than the first idea.

I have no problem, obviously, with cropping. Crop to your heart’s content. Experiment. Play. Discover. The other day as I was cropping some photos in a letterbox-style, I came upon this picture, whose original format was vertical. Naturally, the photo was about the player riding high, ball in hand, on the way to the basket. However, I stared playing with different crops, even horizontal, and came up with a photo that I liked equally well, or perhaps even better.

Here, the focus is still on the player, but the game is implied. You only see spectators, a basketball court, and the faces of the other players as they look on helplessly. There’s nothing that they can do about this high-flying player. With this crop, even though the offensive player is anonymous, I think that it is a more powerful shot. Of course, the shot would not be suitable, perhaps, for a newspaper sports section, or sporting magazine, but as part of a series on sports, perhaps, it might be pretty strong.

If you’ve never tried this before, I would suggest that you give it a shot. You just might find a way to invigorate some images that you might have not liked, thought were so-so, or never gave a second chance. Heck! It might even be an image that you liked!

What do you think about the crop vs. the original?

The other day I received a phone call from my friend Stephen. He was just calling to check in and see how I was doing, as we haven’t spoken in a while. He’s usually very busy on the weekend and I’m home only on the weekends, now.

After a bit of small talk, he asked me a question similar to this:

I’ve visited this park about a million times with my camera and I’m getting bored with it. Do you ever get bored shooting the same place over and over again?

I answered in the affirmative. Sometimes, I do get bored. He then asked what do I do about it? Well, that one is fairly easy. I have about 3 places that I shoot regularly. If I get bored or uninspired with one, I’ll move to one of the other two. Also, depending on the weather, I’ll do one place or the other. For example, one of places is the Van Landingham Glen. If it is drizzling outside, that’s my favorite place to go because there are so many trees, a small stream, and lots of plants that look really nice in the rain. Reedy Creek, on the other hand, is my favorite place to go when it’s foggy outside.

Sometimes, a change of lens is all that is needed. I find that when I am bored with the big picture, so to speak, coming in close, sometimes to macro level, is the ideal elixir to cure what ails me. Other times, I just need to stay away from that place for a while so that I start to miss it and see it with new eyes. Things change frequently such as wind, sunlight intensity, sunlight quality/color, etc. Sometimes I like to go to the garden on a windy day and let the pictures paint themselves using ND (Neutral Density) filters and long shutter speeds, other times multiple exposures, rarely, The Lensbaby. Yet, other times, I try to look for a different perspective, paying attention to things that I might not normally consider. This can be anything from doorways to trashcans.

Lastly, sometimes I don’t go at all because, quite frankly, I’m not in the mood.

So, those are some of the things that I do? What about you? What do you do to make an area ‘fresh’ again?