Views From The Front Porch

In a recent post by Paul Lester, he wrote about going beyond the technical aspect of making pictures; he advanced the idea of using your photos to tell a story. This summer I attempted this type of project with limited success, however Paul's post has once again rekindled the fire. Besides it's winter, the weather is nasty, and I will be taking another class at the community college so a diversion for all of this might be in order.

My plan is to photograph the views from my front porch; the deck of the porch is only four by twelve feet so from that aspect, the world is pretty small. We do however live on a very busy corner traffic wise so my guess is that the photos will not generally be static. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that they will be overly exciting. The object is simply to look and see what happens over a period of time. For this project, I will also keep the advise of Yogi Berra close at hand when he utter the following: "You can learn a lot by just looking".

With all of this in mind, I dashed to the porch this morning for a look and to make a few test shots to see what issues I will be facing. It's amazing what you see on a daily basis but never really pay attention to until you have cause. For example, the newel posts that anchor the railing to the steps restrict a good deal of the view. The three columns that support the porch roof will also present a challenge; I can not just whack them down with an ax!

You will also notice that there are lines in all of the views; they converge, diverge, and supply power to the houses. How do you make them work for you? Since I do not own Photoshop, cloning and stamping is not an option.

Then there is the thought of whether to show vehicle motion by blurring or simply by placement in the street.

I only have two lenses and it appears that my 17-85 mm will struggle with large vehicles such as the city bus. One thing I know for sure, I'm not buying another lens!

It also occurred to me that since today it was overcast, there were no challenges with lighting. On a sunny day, that might not be the case. Just a reminder for those of you who seldom get to the Oregon coast; we do get sunshine occasionally, even in January!

So with all this in mind, I will leave you with just one more thought from the great Yogi Berra who once said the following: "You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there". Let the project begin.