Yes, this is the place that I’ve mentioned yesterday. I’ve returned, because yesterday’s image was cut too tight on the right side.
You see, I’m still shooting unorthodox landscapes. Hmm … can it be that shooting landscapes with telephoto lenses is out of fashion? Or is it only I who can’t see those images in a sea of wide-angle shots? Whatever it is, for me this is an exciting place to explore. I did it with the Sigma 70/2.8 for more than a month now, and at the moment it is the Sigma 150/2.8 that I use. It gives me even more compression, and wide open the DOF is so shallow, it’s pure bliss.
I have long wondered what this image means to me. The trees are a bit like a barrier, a fence, a circle unbroken, guards protecting a forbidden place. This is an inside viewed from an outside, and maybe this place was sacred for some long forgotten people? What does it mean to you?
There is only one more image for today- It’s from the same place where I’ve been in the afternoon, two days ago. Power lines and telephone cables can be the bane of the landscape photographer, but who says that they can’t be an interesting subject?
The Song of the Day is “This Must Be The Place” from the 1983 Talking Heads album “Speaking in Tongues”. See it performed live on YouTube. I guess it’s from the concert movie “Stop Making Sense”. Funny that I’ve never seen the movie, funny that its soundtrack is the only Heads CD that I don’t have. I guess I’m atypical in this respect 🙂
There are 5 comments
Ted Byrne (2008-01-27)
Um.... make that "thew all the pictures in the trash"
SHEEEEZE!
andreas (2008-01-27)
Interesting. I find that I'm quite creative in these environments, but of course my method is very different. What guides me is almost never an intellectual idea, it's an impression of a color, of lines, something very abstract that suddenly flashes up in my mind. I should call that "Visual Ideas", and they are absolutely independent of my political and social preferences, thus they can turn up even in places that I otherwise wouldn't call beautiful, inspiring or only interesting.
The other thing is, that I have no concept of "worthy" or "unworthy" subjects. All subjects are equally neutral, and that helps as well.
mcmurma (2008-01-28)
Fine images, both of them, and I really enjoy the depth, especially in the trees. They seem to be crawling out of the ground and twisting into the sky in some sort of dance.
These kinds of images appeal to me and I'm not sure why. They just look so cool.
I don't often use long lenses, but I am enticed to push them into service more often.
andreas (2008-01-28)
Well, you in the forest, taking images of Devil's Walking Sticks (or whatever they were called), you actually inspired me to carry on with the macros for a while. I do something entirely different with them, but that's how it came to pass 🙂
Ted Byrne (2008-01-27)
Some time ago I set out to do shoot of the mundane and to try to make it interesting. I went to grimly typical industrial site crammed with those box, aluminum clad buildings that look put up over a weekend and that are surrounded by something that looks a little like brown dead grass.
There were telephone lines everywhere, and blacktopped parking lots crammed with nondescript vehicles and dumpsters.
I took some pictures. I came home. I through all the pictures in the trash.
Why can't I get an idea like your telephone pole shot? My eye will not create ideas in those places which I want to share. And yet I bet they are more about modern culture than all of the other gritty and historic, and pretty things we find.
When the cold breaks, I shall go back to that place. There has to be an interesting essay there. You've proven that.
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