486 - Electric Ladyland



Harmony? Disharmony? Shooting landscapes in our modern times can be tough. Of course you can get out into the big national parks (Austria has quite some of them), and then you won’t be bothered by power and telephone lines, but then, why be bothered at all? Are they not an integral part of our life? Don’t we depend on them more than on anything else? Our heating system burns oil (hmm … another such folly), but without electric power it would stop. It is controlled by a computer, it can be programmed to start and stop at certain times of day, to target certain temperatures, whatsoever, but take away these ugly power lines that we photographers hate so much … and it stops.

If it must be, here is a harmonious image as well. Both were shot with the Sigma 70/2.8 at f11, in both I have cloned out some minor distractions. Disharmonious disharmony? Never!

The Song of the Day is “Have You Ever Been (to Electric Ladyland)” from Jimi Hendrix’ 1968 album “Electric Ladyland”.


There are 1 comments

Ted Byrne   (2008-02-25)

I'm puzzled by your lead image. It leaves me with a feeling that it is fighting with the dimensions of the 35mm frame. It leaves me searching for point, a statement, an idea. Is it the antagonism between the romantic utopian bucolic moment and the deliberate geometry of the power highways? Maybe antagonism is the wrong word? Could there be beauty in the creations of those engineers? We know that there is beauty in the radiant vista. Hmmmmm....

I get it, as a lover of music you have created a cacophonic chord which combines individually satisfying elements that clatter against one another.

Lemme ask you... was there a concern in you when you composed this about the way nature makes modernism... ugly 🙂

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