Signals

Understandable, originally uploaded by azMattic.

Ten months ago I decided to take a break from blogging to focus on how I might successfully switch careers after leaving my translation gig in Taiwan to return to my hometown of New York, NY. To make a long story short, I've applied to a few graduate programs and if I'm accepted, I'll be working towards an MFA in Graphic Design starting this fall.

It was a month or so after the last post that I picked out "Understandable" by azMattic. I thought won't it be clever how life right now is giving me conflicting signals, and this photo features a whole mess of signals pointing in different directions? I thought it was poetic back then, and looking at it now I feel that it's still a powerful image. Part of what grabs me is the sense of tension between wire and sky and also how the wires seem to cascade down the image, lending the scene an added sense of scale and distance. The wires remind us of how grounded we are to the earth, to the network of electrical lines and telecommunication fibres that tether us together in the techno-centric modern world.

So on that note, I say hi, again. Welcome to the blog. I hope to update once a week with a new favorite from Flickr. In addition, the tone and structure of subsequent blog posts will likely continue to shift in order to accommodate my persisting shortcomings.

Getting By

活著‧To Live, originally uploaded by Tiac.

Tiac is a really great photographer on Flickr and I always look forward to seeing updates on his page. The coolest thing about his work is that it's all done on a Sony compact digital camera. He has mentioned setting white balance to cloudy to get more warmth and upping saturation and contrast levels to the max. The results are really astounding. He captures ultra colorful images of the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit system and vicinity.

Here, Tiac has titled this photo "To Live", drawing our attention to the rubbish collector, picking up discarded cardboard on his tricycle just to get by and make a living. The crop is perfectly suited for the subject, straight and narrow. The arrows on that wall then further emphasize the straight grind that must be this man's life. There's nothing to do but keep going forward, on and on. I really like the angle and proportions of wall to street. That foreground line is a nice reinforcement of how confined that man is to his path.

I wonder if the decision was his own to make his living this way. What were the circumstances that led to this? There are quite alot of people in the city of Taipei who are in this line of work, so maybe it's as good a life as the next alternative, opening a soup stall or cleaning the escalators in the subway stations. It does seem like strenuous work, though. Hauling flattened cardboard boxes around day in and day out, rain or shine must be draining on the soul. Or maybe it's just what life is. It's work and he gets by. I bet there are people in fancy shoes and fancy suits that are mentally in the exact same place as this guy is.

Crossing

the city, originally uploaded by abre/tus/ojos.

Lighting is everything. Just like how a beautiful model can be ruined by poor lighting, a bustling intersection can be reduced to a static mess of indistinct blobs when shot without consideration of the light source. With the right eye, however, and careful attention paid to natural available light, a simple scene (above) of people crossing the street can be transformed into something magical.

What I love about the lighting here is that the low angle of the sun casts the shadows of the pedestrians down onto the striped crosswalk, adding strips of dark, textureless shadow to the alternating bands of bright reflective white and gritty black asphalt. It almost looks like the white stripes are rays of light stretching down from the upper left. And whereas I might have blindly just tried to shoot silhouettes of back-lit pedestrians, abre/tus/ojos has chosen at angle about 45 degrees from perpendicular to the sun's rays, that has captured the pedestrians with a thin slivers of side-lit highlight. It's just perfect.

Tilting the camera slightly down, he's cropped out any potentially distracting sky or buildings. What is left is a full frame of crosswalk. With the amazing highlights, each person is discreet and clearly visible. I like the sharpness of the forms, making it seem as if we have paused a bustling scene. It feels as if the serenity of the moment might be broken with one false move. And I wonder, are these people on their way to work, energized and invigorated by the rays of a new day's sun? Or are their steps heavy after a long day's work, aching, yet rushing to get home.

Blue

..., originally uploaded by motionid.

Motionid is one out of a handful of photographers over in Japan walking around with amazing lenses strapped around their necks, documenting what they see on the city streets. I've been hooked on this guy's work as he has a knack for capturing subtle emotions in tack sharpness with scarce available light. Each candid portrait is loaded with feeling. The shallow dof afforded by the fast lens isolates these people, magnifying their expressions.

When I see an image like this, I feel like there's a whole story here. One commenter on flickr described the photo as having a cinematic tone and I agree. It's not just the wide crop and the dramatic lighting, but the sense that we are seeing a single frame from a movie. I wonder what it is that's weighing down his shoulders, causing that subtle lean. I wonder what music this man might have playing in his earphones that might cause him to pause and furrow his brow that way. He's dry, but that raincoat tells me maybe he expects stormy weather.

Looking through motionid's stream and seeing photos like this one has opened my eyes to the beauty of cooler color casts at night. I've always tweaked my photos in post to get a warmer, kodak-like, temp. I realize that I've neglected a world of blues and violets that I now want to go out and capture.

Lineup

Untitled, originally uploaded by Jersey Yen.

I loved this shot when I first saw it because of how nearly perfectly everyone is lined up against the wall there. You've got this one horizontal strip of light, nicely highlighting these commuters waiting for the train. It boggles my mind how each one of these people can simultaneously be so emotive. The body language and relationships of their individual silhouettes with each other and the tile background speaks volumes: lethargy, exhaustion, impatience, resignedness, intimacy, friendship, detachedness.

The blur and the skew are both elements that might be considered flaws, but are actually adding to the photograph. I like how the fuzzy forms are kind of mirroring the fuzzy quality of the lighting. That undulating bank of fluorescent lamps above reinforce this off kilter feel of the slanted platform and tired commuters. The thing here to ground us is the station placard, proclaiming the location to be Taipei, the two Chinese characters close to being swallowed by the shadows.

This photograph isn't a favorite just because it captured a feeling, though. It's a favorite because it evokes a feeling. When I looked at this for the first time, there was an immediate recognition. I've stood on that platform before. I've felt like that before underneath those nasty fluorescent lights, sandwiched by darkness. I feel like each one of those people on that platform represent a place I've been at one point. The photo reminds me of all the times I've taken the train to the east coast of Taiwan, in a sour mood about being away from my girlfriend in Taipei. In a way, I feel like this photograph is a memory of mine.

Lastly, I should mention the camera used to take this shot. It's the (in)famous Lomo LC-A. The lomo costs $200 and reigns supreme as king of the "toy camera/lo-fi" hill. Down the line, I'll have an example of color night photography done with a Lomo because the images that come out of this camera can also be shockingly saturated.

Vignette

Entre los celindos, originally uploaded by Franc-tireur.

Franc-tireur is a photographer from Spain who does some great street photography. I love this shot because of the clean silhouette of the solitary figure, walking up the street. The heavy vignetting in the corners works well to soften the surroundings and keep our attention on the center of the photograph. I wonder if it says anything about me that I think she's walking away. You really can't tell if she is facing towards the camera or away.

The exposure here is just right. By exposing for the pink blossoms, the sky in the distance is blown and the figure's features, backlit, are lost in the shadow. This was a great way to highlight this really simple, elegant silhouette. A nice touch are the marks on the street there, leading the eyes to the focal point of the picture. I especially love these types of compositions, where are strong subject is placed smack in the center. It's a bold statement. Of note is also that his crop of the scene has the figure about two-thirds of the way down the frame. Works nicely.

Something else I should mention here is post-processing. It's usually not worthwhile to speculate whether or not an image is "real" or "fake". By nature of how we view photography (i.e. on a computer), all that we see has been processed x number of times. At the very least, an image was scanned, a file was transferred, and a (likely uncalibrated) monitor did its best to render a string of 1s and 0s. Chances are, there was probably an intervention by the photographer at some point, adjusting the image in a way to best convey its message. And if the image was taken with a digital camera, even before any human clicks on a sliding bar to adjust contrast, a little chip inside an expensive piece of equipment has processed information from a sensor and translated it into a useful, compact, little file.

Photography is art. Here, the art is an image. That image can be interesting or boring. It can pluck at our heartstrings or blend into the background. Sometimes someone will push a button and through divine providence (or something that looks just like it) create a masterpiece with no extra work. But other times (most times), the masterpiece takes work. That work is post processing. Now after having said all that, I can come to my point. I love the treatment on this photo. The dreamy, surreal quality of the light here is superb and takes the image to another level.