Todd, I'm sure you had something in mind when you shot this scene. What was it? The picture doesn't tell me.
Russ- what I saw and wanted to express was the tendency in the South to "abandon, but keep worthless things that once had value". After your question, here again i think is my problem with context. The image itself doesn't really convey that does it? The truck has been abandoned, it isn't even parked on level ground. there isn't enough detail visible to see that the child's swing set hasn't been used in years. The worthless clutter waiting to be put into a "locked" storage isn't discernible. The unkempt weeds work. The clutter on the porch of the house work, but could be more emphasised. Also not in the image is the rest of the neighborhood; everything had been abandoned, all businesses closed.I have other images from this shoot that convey the point better that this one. I will post one of those later today after I work on it some. Thank you for making me think more about it
One problem is that since photography takes fairly sophisticated gear we tend to get wrapped around the axle on technique and equipment. That's not the real problem. The real problem is WHAT to shoot and how to frame it to convey what made you want to shoot it. The rest of the stuff is trivial.
... the tendency in the South to "abandon, but keep worthless things that once had value".
...The truck has been abandoned, it isn't even parked on level ground. there isn't enough detail visible to see that the child's swing set hasn't been used in years. The worthless clutter waiting to be put into a "locked" storage isn't discernible. The unkempt weeds work. The clutter on the porch of the house work, but could be more emphasised. Also not in the image is the rest of the neighborhood; everything had been abandoned, all businesses closed...
I don't see the idea of abandonment, or rather retaining things that have outlasted their usefulness but for whatever reason you don't want to let go or accept that. I do this all the time. Was the time I had two gearboxes and three V8 engines for my Range Rover. Did I ever use any of them? Nope but they were cheap or free and 'might have been useful'. This in the UK mind you where space can be at a premium.How could you show the way I thought about it in a photograph? I suspect by including me within the context. Probably capturing me looking a bit shifty about keeping all this junk, and if you could get my wife in on it then you'd have a study that would communicate I wonder if that's a trend in your photographs? You're trying to communicate something about the Deep South without including a vital element - the people. Maybe you have set yourself an impossible task. I suspect for this shot to work you need to try and imply my mindset of 'it might be useful some day' - maybe you can find a scene where the truck has been partially stripped for parts? Or better still someone doing the stripping.Just some thoughts.
Todd, that's an interesting post by Mike, and he's onto something. But the problem is I don't think you're going to be able to portray anything significant about the deep South with a single photograph. I used to travel through the South occasionally when I was a kid -- let's say, middle to late thirties -- and in those days there was a significant difference between the South and the North. The Farm Security Administration photographic project covered the difference. Even as late as the mid fifties there still was a marked difference. But the difference is gone now -- at least the difference you can sum up in a photograph. Nowadays I live in central Florida, and that's deep South. The only significant difference I can catch in a photograph is moss hanging from the trees.But I've been talking about photographs. Underneath what's visible there's still a pretty important difference, but I think you'd have to do a photographic essay, probably with associated text, even to touch on the difference.
