What comes first, the image or the title? A visual or a concept? For me most of the time it’s the image. Only very rarely do I try to visualize a concept, and when I do, then Ted calls my hand a dead fish 🙂
Today it’s something in between. I had the Sigma 10-20 mounted from yesterday and thought to myself, heck, why change? Sure, it can easily get a little awkward using it in town, because all the conventional strategies don’t work. There is too much around, it changes too fast and completely unpredictable, so forget about wide-angle cityscapes like you would do landscape, grand vista plus blown up foreground. What does work though, is going near. Very near, I mean. 10 inches or so, I mean.
Basically, while in town, I frequently use the ultra-wide for its distorted perspective only. I don’t even pretend to care for any illusion of natural proportions. Ted would probably call it the “comic book perspectives”, and if I had already read “Understanding Comics”, I’d know for sure 🙂
Anyway. The funny thing is, that my first idea, even before I had left my flat (yes, that’s an apartment, guys), was to go near on a car, preferably near the headlights. I had an old car in my mind, but I didn’t see anything suitable for the whole day. I saw this Mini though. Cute eyes, aye?
The Song of the Day is “Them There Eyes”, but not from Billie Holiday, not even from the fantastic Anita O’Day (the fastest version I’ve ever heard!), no, this particular eye calls for Louis Armstrong. I have it on one of the 42 discs in a collection called “The Ultimate Jazz Archive”. It’s not officially available in the US (I believe it is produced by a label in the Netherlands) and Amazon asks an obscene price for it, so if you’re interested, get it elsewhere. These are recordings from the beginnings of Jazz up to 1955, i.e. they are now in the public domain. That’s the reason why I could get the whole set new for 99 Euro or something like that. The recordings are not of a particular good quality, technically I mean, but there are some jewels and this is one of them.