10 past midnight » buildings

How I do it…

wooddickinson — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 21:13:15 +0000

October is my favorite month so I was looking back at some work I did last year. The monsters of Mission. It was a very fun project and maybe I’ll do it again but in a broader sense. I’m out of Mission so I try very hard NOT to go there. There are a lot of really cool place around Kansas City to hunt for ideas.

I don’t talk a lot about how I work so I thought I’d take you through one of the images I did last year. “Wings.” What I really do is when I see something that stirs my artistic curiosity I stop and look at it and if I really see what I’m looking for I take some shots. What I see is not what others driving by see. I try to peel back the layers of metaphors and get to what the object or what ever really is. In this case I saw an abandoned gas station with those wing type lights on the pump islands. The pumps were long gone but these lights were still standing but in wacky ways. I hoped out of my car and shot the light from a few angles and varying exposures and left. Very quick operation.

Original photo of the light.

Now this original was over exposed but I really liked the texture and deep blues so this is where I started. I often begin with a less than perfect shot if it is closer to what I “see.” So from here I usual spend time in Lightroom doing development adjustments. I messed with the exposure, color mix and cropping. Once it is looking pretty good I will have an image that looks like this.

Intermediate image

Now into Photoshop to remove the light pole and make sure the image is clean. I did color fine tuning here with effects to produce the final image.

Wing (finished piece)

I know I didn’t explain which knobs I turned but I don’t really remember. I do it by feel not formula. Once I finish the piece I take back into Lightroom. I work from DNG files through the entire process. I don’t do jpegs unless I have to. There are times I have to export a DNG file into a JPEG for some external processing but I always re-import the image as a DNG.

Well that’s it for now. I finished writing the book about Robin Randle and I’m editing so I can create readers copies. That’s kept me off the streets so I’m itching to get shooting again.

Remember my Photo Site

wooddickinson — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 08:43:19 +0000

Everywhere

wooddickinson — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:03:40 +0000

Carved stone is everywhere around cities. Some more than others. My latest project is looking at these guys and really see them and find a proper way to represent the emotional content. This photo is an early trial.

Robin’s House

wooddickinson — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:35:02 +0000

Robin's House

A project I have been working on for a long time is a book. This book is a horror story. Maybe I should rephrase that. It is a ghost story.

As I have been getting to the core of the incidents that take place in a small town called Mercy I am developing sets of photographs that capture (for me anyway) the texture of the place. A mood.

This is a photo where a young woman lives alone. Her name is Robin Hunter. Her life is begining to get slippery. Being a visual person I find this really helps me.

Asylum

wooddickinson — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:22:43 +0000

When you think of the word asylum you usually don’t think of the huge Insane Asylums that we had in this country until the mid 1980s. Just a few of them are still standing, a testament to another failed attempt on societies part in helping the insane. They use to be called Lunatic Asylums due to the fact it was thought the moon had some sway over these tortured people.

Today, even with the glut of drug ads for depression medication, we don’t except people with mental illness like we would any other sick person. We still want to shut the insane away or just abandoned them to a life of homelessness.

Asylum Door

Asylum

wooddickinson — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:56:31 +0000

Scattered all over this country are the remains of our answer to helping people with mental illness. During the 1980s almost all these facilities were closed and many people were left to live on the street as best they could. These old asylums were as large as a college campus and self-sufficient. They grew their own food and had their own power plants.

Now the ones that haven’t been torn down lie shattered like many of the lives of the residence who once lived there. A stark reminder that as a society we have yet come to grips with mental illness or its treatment.

Asylum 1

Window #3

wooddickinson — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:17:15 +0000

Window #3

Look closely for hidden images.

Experiment

wooddickinson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:29:04 +0000

I’m working with a new image technique using a plug-in called Lucis Pro 6.0. I’m finding it to allow me to dig deeper into the emotional elements of these photos.

Chicago Rain

wooddickinson — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:42:06 +0000

On our last trip to Chicago we were met by rain and cold. I took this photo near the North Face store where Kathleen works. It has been added along with two other photos to 100in365 so check it out. I’d love some comments.

Chicago Rain

The White Door

wooddickinson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:04:53 +0000

Taken from 100 in 365

The White Door

This white door is located on a building at the West Bottoms in Kansas City, Missouri. I doubt very much that it still exist as rapidly as things are being torn down in that part of town.

I was told not long ago that some of my photographs are like a Rorschach test. That if you look at them long enough you will begin to find images of other things. I really like that idea. When I see old doors like this that’s how they impress me. They work as symbols to another place and time. That is why I process the photos the way I do.

The last thing I’m looking for is a clean crisp image of an aged door. I’m looking at a symbol of the past. An object that could tell many stories and with the degradation of the image and my attempt to create the door as I see it I hope that it will bring stories out of your mind.

I find this kind of work very satisfying. Needless to say I love beautiful sharp and clear images as well and love to produce them when I can but I find myself floating back to this type of image most of the time. High contrast, distressed layers and a level of abstractness that causes the viewer to interact on a more personal and emotional level.

With the advent of Photoshop and all the “toys” you have at your disposal I think you have to be very careful not to over do this. I find I end up doing several versions of a photograph before I see what I’m looking for. It is a laborious process and takes a lot of time to think through the problem but when I’m done I feel I have done more that just create a photo. I look at it as a work of art with purpose and meaning.