Monday, May 18, 2009

Eye of the Beholder...

...Isn't that what they say about Beauty?


About 2 weeks ago I was driving along North Front St in Harrisburg, returning from a shoot at the Symphony Show House, when I drove by this scene. What do you see?

I see a red wall. Green Grass, yellow dandelions. White flowers on three trees of differing heights, from short to tall. And stark shadows cast by a mid afternoon, early spring sun. I also see the ugly construction site on one side, and the not so pleasant looking motel on the other. Not to mention the close proximity to a busy secondary road. I took all this in in the time it takes to drive by a 10 meter long scene at 40 miles per hour, about 1/2 of a second (at this speed you are traveling at 58.6 feet/second).

Two more views of the overall scene:






The potential for images made here was begging me to turn around. I had a full afternoon of work, but I could not resist the Siren song of all the beauty I had driven by. A quarter mile down a did a u-ey and parked in the construction site to the left. Warning about getting caught up in road side photo opps: ALWAYS watch were you park. On this day I pulled in over hundreds of rusty nails. Somehow I was able to get out of there with out a flat, or tetnis!. Other times I have almost been stuck in mud or in snow banks and once even had the owner of a farm chase me off with a fog horn! Glad it wasn't his hunting rifle.

One more word of caution, please pay attention to traffic, people think you are crazy when you stop your vehicle in the middle of traffic to take a photo. And while lost in their thoughts of you in a straight jacket, may not pay close enough attention. I have almost been hit by buses, semi's, mini vans and Hummers. Also, pay attention to personal property. Unless you ask permision don't park on it, and be carefull photographing it, that is somewhat of a legal grey area that I don't endevour to get into at this time.

Here are a few of my interpretations of the scene:







And HERE is the link to see the images a bit larger.