Backstage Kokoro
A "behind-the-scenes" look at selected images in my Kokoro project —
Content, photographic notes, EXIF data, creative process, miscellaneous commentary, and original digital captures. And now with additional audio comments about selected images!
From Kokoro #042 - Circular Logic
There are two stories worth telling about this image. The first is the machine itself, some giant part from an old steam engine in a tractor museum in Crosby, North Dakota. Well, it was really just a giant barn with a bunch of old steam engine tractors crowded into storage, but they call it a museum, so I will, too.
The tractors were so close to one another that I quickly became frustrated that I couldn't compose a photograph other than bits and parts. Finally, I realized my frustration was entirely self-inflicted. If bits and part were what the place was willing to give me, why not just go with it?
With this liberation, I started seeing these huge flywheels everywhere. Slowly a mini-project occurred to me. After a half-dozen images, the title popped into my head — Circular Logic. Now fully inspired, I went to work and started "capturing assets" for something I would do with them, someday.
That is where the second story comes into play. The photographs were predictibly cumbersome, cluttered, and uninteresting as photographed. Playing around with a few of the files, I realized I could isolate the parts I wanted to make a more interesting image by simply erasing the cluttered areas. Now the image included only the parts I wanted, but against a boring white background. Yawn. Then I remembered I had photographed a large piece of sheet metal for just such an occassion. I turned it into a dark backgound, converted the white background of the wheel images into transparency, and created the layouts in InDesign with the transparent photo on top of the sheet metal background. The project easily came together in just a few hours of work on the computer.
This certainly isn't the most important work I've done in my photographic life, but I do find it rewarding nonetheless to simply play around with an idea until a solution is found. And a little fun along the way never hurts!
Original digital capture (downsized for the web)
And here is the original background image (downsized for the web)
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There are two stories worth telling about this image. The first is the machine itself, some giant part from an old steam engine in a tractor museum in Crosby, North Dakota. Well, it was really just a giant barn with a bunch of old steam engine tractors crowded into storage, but they call it a museum, so I will, too.
The tractors were so close to one another that I quickly became frustrated that I couldn't compose a photograph other than bits and parts. Finally, I realized my frustration was entirely self-inflicted. If bits and part were what the place was willing to give me, why not just go with it?
With this liberation, I started seeing these huge flywheels everywhere. Slowly a mini-project occurred to me. After a half-dozen images, the title popped into my head — Circular Logic. Now fully inspired, I went to work and started "capturing assets" for something I would do with them, someday.
That is where the second story comes into play. The photographs were predictibly cumbersome, cluttered, and uninteresting as photographed. Playing around with a few of the files, I realized I could isolate the parts I wanted to make a more interesting image by simply erasing the cluttered areas. Now the image included only the parts I wanted, but against a boring white background. Yawn. Then I remembered I had photographed a large piece of sheet metal for just such an occassion. I turned it into a dark backgound, converted the white background of the wheel images into transparency, and created the layouts in InDesign with the transparent photo on top of the sheet metal background. The project easily came together in just a few hours of work on the computer.
This certainly isn't the most important work I've done in my photographic life, but I do find it rewarding nonetheless to simply play around with an idea until a solution is found. And a little fun along the way never hurts!
Original digital capture (downsized for the web)
And here is the original background image (downsized for the web)
, , , ,