Hi everybody. I’m sitting on the train right now, have some images of yesterday processed and already uploaded, an Image of the Day selected, a title found, and only some text to write. Here we go:
Snow in a city, oh my, what a mess this is. Let’s talk about this image first. Like all the others it has been shot with the Sigma 20/1.8, my favorite lens at the moment. Basically what I saw and what caused me take the image, were two signposts, none of them vertical, leaning in different directions. I’ve accented this by pointing the lens down, and with a wide-angle, this strongly distorts the angles. Of course the size difference between the two posts is exaggerated as well, but there were enough other oblique lines to make up for it.
The second image is much more interesting and at the same time slightly borderline. I don’t know how you think about it, but I believe it is a stunning image. The only problem is, it is not wholly mine. Below you see the original poster.
The 20/1.8 focuses very near, practically to within an inch of the front element. That’s what I have used here, and I have used the curvature of the advertising pillar to create the illusion of a real face. Additionally the distortion of the wide-angle has added something like a smirk that clearly is not in the original image.
Actually I like this image so much, that I would certainly have made it the Image of the Day, if there had not been these nagging questions.
I definitely had the right to make the image, no doubt about it. I suppose I could even sell it, because although it is obviously derived, there is a substantial artistic contribution by me. I really use this image as a subject, just like I do with other things on the street, architecture, people, whatever. It’s simply one element that I use in a composition of mine. Still …
I’m very interested in the legal situation in different countries. But even more so, I am interested in your view of the, well, let’s call it moral situation. If this were your image, would you call it Your image? Is this appropriation? What do you think?
The last image of yesterday was shot on the playground that we saw the last time in “822 - Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself”.
The Song of the Day, “Ragged & Dirty”, is an old blues that Bob Dylan performed on his 1993 album “World Gone Wrong”. This is from an interesting period when on stage he performed his own songs, but on two albums of that time he played other people’s blues music. And very well he did 🙂
YouTube has a different version. Admittedly it’s not Dylan, but it’s actually quite good and not far away stylistically.
Funny. Now that I think of it, I have said no word about the Image of the Day. Uhhh … well … it’s a … a cart. Yeah, really 🙂