Subtle

Have a look at this photograph...

This is the last exposure made on a roll I shot a week and a half ago or so. It's a crumbling wall that served some unknown purpose as part of the old Erie Beach Amusement Park which ceased operations in 1930, a five minute drive from my home in Fort Erie, Canada. I've photographed it many times, so many that I really hesitate to do any more images of it unless I can really find some new approach to it. I feel almost guilty for when I shoot this, the subject is just too easy, too obvious.

On this particular morning I found myself wandering this well-trodden shore doing my best to record on film that sense of understated calm that hung in the air. Having fired off nine of the ten exposures my camera yields on a roll of 120 film I thought it might be worth a go to do one more of the old wall. If nothing else it I would finish the roll. It was as good a subject as any that morning and it would be the first time I'd be taking this approach to the subject using my recently acquired 50mm Sekor C lens (equivalent to about a 25mm lens on a 35mm camera). I was mildly impressed with my decision when I looked through the viewfinder. It doesn't quite capture the feel I was going for, but it's not bad. I like the shot. I don't love it.

As I was removing the spent roll and loading a new one in I thought of a few tweaks I could make in my approach to the shot. The camera was still on the tripod, unmoved. I wondered if using a red contrast filter (see the previous post) might alter the appearance of the sky. I may have closed the aperture down another stop for more depth of field but I can't remember for sure. After adjusting the shutter speed two or three stops to compensate (to maybe 1/8th or 1/4 second I think) I took another exposure to start off the new roll which languished in the camera for about another week or so after the photo above was developed.

Have a look at that photograph...

Does it strike you as being all that different?

I remember being drawn in close to the screen as the image came up from the scanner. Without the first photograph right there to compare it to it seemed to be for all intents and purposes the exact same shot, yet even then, before the careful contrast tweaks and local adjustments it was clear that, to me at least, that this photograph had a quality the first one lacked. It was immediate, a felt thing. Not only does it seem to have captured the sense of atmosphere present that morning, I'd almost say it accentuates it. This shot is a hit.

Only when I drew them up side by side did I realize the most obvious difference between the two shots is in the texture of the water. It was more of a difference than I would have expected. In the past I have been surprised at how little shutter speeds as low as 1/4 second have had on the apparent texture of water like this. Certainly there would be some difference, but I have to wonder if some other change was partly responsible for this like an un-noticed change in the breeze.

Whatever the cause of the difference the more interesting question to me is why this change should so drastically change the impact these two photographs have on me. The texture of the water in the first shot after all seems like an interesting detail. Looking at that image alone I don't think I would ever think to pin that as something that diminishes the effectiveness of the photograph. The water in both images could be described as calm.

The first thing that strikes me is that the sense of distance in the second exposure is a little more ambiguous. It's possible to imagine the wall extends further into the distance which is why this image seems more mysterious and more lonely. I believe this may be because the ripples on the surface of the water in the other shot provide more of a sense of scale, in this case revealing too much.

The second thing I notice is that while there is a contrast in texture between water and the hard grittiness of the concrete wall, it is not as great in the first image. In the second photograph the almost misty surface of the lake (you might see it as an ocean if you didn't know) provides the perfect foil for the crumbling wall, isolating it further, heightening those said same senses - mystery and loneliness.

Then again I could just be going on about things others just don't see. For all I know my sense that the second photograph is the richer of the two in terms of its sense of mood could be a minority opinion. What do you think? I'd love to hear it.