Thursday, January 21, 2016

Where the rubber hits the road

Don't tread on me
London, ON
January 2016
Thematic. Tires. Here.
The photographic process starts long before you pick up a camera and point it in the right direction. Like digestion, it begins when your brain begins to churn the possibilities.

And those possibilities started to form before I even made it outside on my way home from the office last night. I had to be somewhere in negative time, so I couldn't linger over the composition. The late afternoon light was already fading, made worse by the thick cloud cover overhead. I gave myself one minute to set up, shoot, and get on my way.

So as I strolled across the parking lot toward my very filthy vehicle, my mind raced as it quietly searched for something worthy of attention on this very unspectacular day. And when it bore in on my tire tread, I knew this was it. With pre-set guidance re. what I was looking for and how I wanted to capture it, I'm pretty sure I was done composing and shooting in less than half that time.

In the end, it isn't a sunset over a fiery-red, reflective ocean. Nor is it an X Games action shot. It'll never grace a magazine cover (they still exist?) or a design website. But even slightly off-normal views of very normal things during an otherwise normal moment in a similarly normal place can have their own charms.

Each and every day, this uber-dirty patch of rubber partners with three other uber-dirty patches of rubber to keep me from being flung into a ditch or into the path of an oncoming ice cream truck. The least I could do was give it its moment in the somewhat muted sun.

Your turn: A time when you captured a normal object or scene in an abnormal way. Aaaaaaaaand...go!

1 comment:

Tabor said...

Water from rain on the wooden floor of my deck reflecting the Christmas lights.