My wife informs me that my effort for yesterday – the abandoned chair – was horrible. And while I don’t think it was quite that bad, I do agree it probably wasn’t one of my best efforts. So, with that in mind, I’ll post today’s entry a little earlier than usual ;-)
Across the road from where I work is what used to be a supermarket. It shut down about a year ago, and the building and the surrounding area have declined markedly during that time – posters have been stuck over the steel shutters, the decorative lights near the entrance to the store have been smashed, and the more secluded areas are strewn with litter, beer cans and broken glass.
Normally I don’t pay to much attention but today, as I walked past, I noticed that there were various small piles of torn up photographs. One pile seemed to be mostly shots of small children, all torn neatly down the middle, there was another smaller pile of various different subjects, and a little way from the rest were these ones.
Oddly, I don’t know what’s on the middle shot of these three as I didn’t want to move them. There was something quite strange, almost disturbing, about viewing the torn up remnants of someone else’s life, and I just decided to document them, then walked away. So, I don’t know who’s hand this is, nor why it was posed in this way. Neither do I have any idea as to who the person is in the lower picture …
camera capture date aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO focal length image quality white balance optical filter
Canon G5
1.48pm on 1/3/04
f6.3
1/320
aperture priority
+0.0
evaluative
50
23mm
RAW
auto
B+W UV 010
If you hadn't mentioned that you found these pictures stacked this way I would have guessed this photo was staged, for sure. It's a very odd find. Wonderfully odd!
I found the chair photo quite interesting. But this one... oh my... it looks like the hand is coming right out of the picture! Unbelievable effect. It's like one of those commercials for photo printers, which show you an almost alive photograph. Excellent shot.
Whoa--that's really eerie (in a good way!) Have you ever seen Shooting the Past by Stephen Poliakoff? Apart from being an excellent drama, this image really reminded me of it. It tells the story of a huge picture library, which is about to be sold off piece-meal. To try to save it intact, the librarians attempt to convince the guy breaking it up that it was too valuable to separate by finding an amazing story by piecing together hundreds of photos. These photos could be part of such a story. It would make a great start to a novel!
comment by djn1 at 10:53 AM (GMT) on 3 March, 2004
Thanks. I went back yesterday, mainly because I was curious about the photograph that we can't see in this shot, but they'd gone. Some of the torn up images of the children were still there, but all three of these had totally dissapeared ... odd. That said, I guess that if I had found them, and the middle one had turned out to be a picture of somebody's cat (or similar), I think I would have been quite dissapointed ;-)
bsag: no, I haven't seen it, but I think I'll probably try to - it sounds interesting (and I wish I had time to write a novel ;-)
tom: thanks for the link - it's an interesting site.
My wife informs me that my effort for yesterday – the abandoned chair – was horrible. And while I don’t think it was quite that bad, I do agree it probably wasn’t one of my best efforts. So, with that in mind, I’ll post today’s entry a little earlier than usual ;-)
Across the road from where I work is what used to be a supermarket. It shut down about a year ago, and the building and the surrounding area have declined markedly during that time – posters have been stuck over the steel shutters, the decorative lights near the entrance to the store have been smashed, and the more secluded areas are strewn with litter, beer cans and broken glass.
Normally I don’t pay to much attention but today, as I walked past, I noticed that there were various small piles of torn up photographs. One pile seemed to be mostly shots of small children, all torn neatly down the middle, there was another smaller pile of various different subjects, and a little way from the rest were these ones.
Oddly, I don’t know what’s on the middle shot of these three as I didn’t want to move them. There was something quite strange, almost disturbing, about viewing the torn up remnants of someone else’s life, and I just decided to document them, then walked away. So, I don’t know who’s hand this is, nor why it was posed in this way. Neither do I have any idea as to who the person is in the lower picture …
capture date
aperture
shutter speed
shooting mode
exposure bias
metering mode
ISO
focal length
image quality
white balance
optical filter
1.48pm on 1/3/04
f6.3
1/320
aperture priority
+0.0
evaluative
50
23mm
RAW
auto
B+W UV 010
Fascinating and creepy at the same time.
Very cool. It really made me do a double-take and it leaves so much to the imagination.
If you hadn't mentioned that you found these pictures stacked this way I would have guessed this photo was staged, for sure. It's a very odd find. Wonderfully odd!
I found the chair photo quite interesting. But this one... oh my... it looks like the hand is coming right out of the picture! Unbelievable effect. It's like one of those commercials for photo printers, which show you an almost alive photograph. Excellent shot.
Whoa--that's really eerie (in a good way!) Have you ever seen Shooting the Past by Stephen Poliakoff? Apart from being an excellent drama, this image really reminded me of it. It tells the story of a huge picture library, which is about to be sold off piece-meal. To try to save it intact, the librarians attempt to convince the guy breaking it up that it was too valuable to separate by finding an amazing story by piecing together hundreds of photos. These photos could be part of such a story. It would make a great start to a novel!
i loved the chair! oh well. yes, this is great though. isthisyou.co.uk may be interested.
Escher would be proud. :)
Thanks. I went back yesterday, mainly because I was curious about the photograph that we can't see in this shot, but they'd gone. Some of the torn up images of the children were still there, but all three of these had totally dissapeared ... odd. That said, I guess that if I had found them, and the middle one had turned out to be a picture of somebody's cat (or similar), I think I would have been quite dissapointed ;-)
bsag: no, I haven't seen it, but I think I'll probably try to - it sounds interesting (and I wish I had time to write a novel ;-)
tom: thanks for the link - it's an interesting site.