952 - I Bet You're All So Happy In Suburbian Dream



Well, that’s not really suburbia, at least has not been for 150 years now 🙂

This is in Vienna’s 8th district, very near from where I work, very near to the heart of the city.

Are these dreams? Does any of these images qualify? Actually I don’t know. I am struggling with “Urban Dreams”, my SoFoBoMo book. No, it’s worse, I am struggling with the very basics: How do I get a sequence out of a bunch of images?

I have played around with grouping in Adobe Bridge and with manual “Lighttable” sort in IMatch, my image database, but that will only take you so far.

I guess my problem is not grouping. After all, when I have found groups, what am I supposed to do? Sequence inside of the groups and then string the groups together?

Apart from the obvious problem, that the applied categories are not sharp, have overlaps, it sounds rather boring to me, a little bit like pointing with fingers, and it gives up on possible dramatic effects, on implied stories. It’s not what I’m going to do. But then, what else?

At the moment I have 85 images processed and published since May 4, the day that I began shooting with the project “Urban Dreams” in mind. Some more sleep unprocessed and I could pull them out if I need more of a certain kind. I will make some more in the remaining 12 days, today included, although three of those days will be spent in Carinthia, thus we’re down to 9. If I happen to come up with good candidates, I really plan to make changes until the last possible moment. That makes for at least about 100 images.

My next step will be to simply begin a book. I will use the measurements that Blurbs specifies for their 8x10 inch landscape book. This is not very big, in fact it’s rather small, but I just held a book with polaroids by Manual Alvarez Bravo in my hands, and I found it to be very comfortable to hold.

I will begin by selecting safe candidates that must go into the book. Then I will try to surround them with what feels good, makes sense, tells a story, juxtaposes them, whatever. Finally I’ll try to bring those strings into a sequence. We’ll see how far I get with that 🙂

If you wonder, today’s title is a line from the Sex Pistols song “Satellite”. I really like the version from their 1996 reunion tour “Filthy Lucre”, but your taste may be different. YouTube has a video of the original.