1371 - The Gate

2010-07-16

A house was torn down. It happened sometime in winter, I saw it, took some photos, and for months now I have taken images at that place. Only every few weeks, but again and again. One of them even made it (see “1323 - There She Goes, My Beautiful World”), but on average they were rubbish. I could simply have given up, but in such cases I frequently see a certain quality in a scene, a quality that attracts me, but I can’t necessarily explain what it is. Sometimes it is a detail, and often this detail can’t strictly be photographed. My mind isolates it and in my mind it it stands out to a degree, that light and reality can’t support.

I am not sure if it was always this gate, that has fascinated me, but today, when I took this image this morning, today I am sure it was.

Photoshop-wise I have used lots of “Fill light” and “Recover” in Camera RAW, Topaz Adjust’s “Spicify” filter, partially applied with a mask, but the real interesting thing was a “B+W/Blue” adjustment layer, that I put in “Difference” mode. That’s a cool combination, all the B+W filters produce different results, and I could have worked in many different directions. This was one that I really, really liked. Sometimes it’s a good idea to just fool around and see what happens 😄

Is this a SoFoBoMo image? Maybe. I had planned to strictly use images from Italy, but I may make exceptions.

The Song of the Day is the beautiful “Heaven’s Gate” from Toni Childs’ 1991 album “House Of Hope”. Hear it on YouTube.

There are 5 comments

Ove   (2010-07-16)

It is surreal, the port, as it appears now.

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Earl   (2010-07-17)

Andreas, I like your processing on this image and you've spurred me into wanting to get back into PS to "fool around" with some of my own images.

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Sven W   (2010-07-18)

Andreas, you've put a great message into this post: to be intuitive and to photograph at the subconscious level. And also that persistence pays!

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andreas   (2010-07-20)

Thanks. I think there is something amazing in our ability to concentrate on parts of a scene, and somehow this is lost when we look at an image. I don't know why. Maybe it's because we see the image as flat and artificial, as unreal. Fact is, at least for me, it's true: I don't see images like I see the real world. Maybe it's a 2D vs 3D thing. I remember, when I first saw "Avatar" in IMAX 3D, I had a similar impression: I did not look at the whole image, I scanned it piece for piece. Of course I do it with images as well, it's only to a lesser degree. This kind of processing is sort of a substitute for that diminished ability to isolate detail in 2D space. It's not subtle, I guess it can easily be overdone and one could argue I have so, but I think that it works well here.

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April   (2010-07-26)

I enjoy the sense of discovering a treasure here. Yes, you've guided our eye toward the subject and that feeling through processing; but in isolation from the context I don't think the gate would have nearly that impact.

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