Faces of Exit 270 Part 6

My faces of Exit 270 are not exactly street photography – since in many of the photos there is very little of the street scene involved.  This is why I call it the faces of Exit 270.  While many of the subjects in the photos are not aware they are being photographed –there are some where I have asked for permission to photograph them, while telling them to try and ignore my presence.   My images are what you would call “grab shots”, I do try to pick my subjects and carefully compose the shot.  All of the images have been shot in color and converted to black and white because I feel black and white offers a more dramatic effect than the same image in color.  My camera of choice for this type of shooting is a Sony Nex7, because it is unobtrusive and gives me the ability to compose and shoot quickly.   

Desert Debris

Debbie Harry once said, “I don’t mind if my skull ends up on a shelf as long as it’s got my name on it.”

Recently a friend loaned me some animal skulls for me to work into some still life photographs. I guess he figured my macabre interest in such items would produce some interesting possibilities.  So after studying them for a couple of days I set about constructing the attached still life scenarios.  The lighting used was a portable Flashpoint Led light, which enabled me to direct the light or paint with it hand held. Using a Nikon D7000 at ISO100 with an f8 setting, I preceded to create the following images with some PS help.  

Crayola Village

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” Claude Monet

With respect to art, there was a period where artists such as Van Gough, Gauguin led by Matisse abandoned the idea of using color to define objects but let color become the subject of their art.  In architecture you do not usually find color the defining element, however, La Placita Village is a case in point.

La Placita Village is a business complex downtown that presents the photographer with a multitude of lines, shapes and angles –it is a group of buildings where the architects were let loose with a box of 32 Crayola crayons.    La Placita is a village where color collides with design -and color is the subject of this post.  The images were all shot using a Sony Nex7 camera incorporated with both a 16mm lens and a fisheye converter for some images.  

Dynamic U of A Lines

There is a thing called “dynamic lines” both in painting and in photography.   Diagonal, acute and oblique lines help to lead the eye toward a central subject or help to frame and break up the image into various elements.  I don’t think most photographers consciously are aware of these somewhat invisible lines within their images, but become aware of them in post processing of the images.  I tend to think this is a subconscious awareness that comes with years of photographing various subjects.

An example of this can be seen in the images I have shot of the buildings of the University of Arizona.  This is one of my favorite places to examine architectural subjects.  The images do not depict the complete buildings, but rather the emphasis is on lines and shapes that makeup their design.    

I have walked through this university many time and each time seen new perspectives that I didn’t see the first time.  With all landscape or architectural images the time of the day you choose to shoot will give you a different perspective of the image because of the quality, quantity and direction of the light falling on your subject.  These images were shot with the sun high in the sky, which tended to flatten out the shapes and open up some of the shadow areas.  The lens being used is a super wide fisheye lens, which exaggerates the perspective of the architectural shapes.