Thursday, December 27

City Sidewalks

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Like the fiber in a tapestry the artist and the city are wound tight. In Pittsburgh each glimmers inextricably.

It's odd that cities and artists need one another when the functions they perform seem so different. Which I suppose explain why artists revile so much of urban life, longing for an imagined peace in the "natural" ways of the countryside. And why cities dismiss the artists' bitching, whining, and longing for a better place as so much pretentious prattle.

I like urban tensions, I think they attract my lens the way trailer parks attract cyclones.

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GEEK STUFF: Downtown Pittsburgh, PA. Canon EOS 20D, 12/26/07:2:45 pm: Lens 10-22mm, Focal Length: 10mm, Exp 1/125@f/7.1, ISO 400, Metering Mode: pattern, Exposure bias 0, Camera RAW

2 comments:

Andreas said...

Compositionally I love this image and it makes me wonder if it's not time to put down the boring 70 for a while and get back to ultra-wide. The choice of colors - I don't know. Actually the red irritates me, but on the other hand, maybe that contributes to the tension you write about???

Were it me, I'd probably have gone for a darker and less saturated cyan, probably more on the teal side. It is definitely easier to the eye, at least to mine, but as I mentioned, it is also more harmonious, making the background much more a background, and on that way it loses tension. No doubt about it. Hmmm ... I guess I prefer your version :)

Great image.

Andreas

Ted said...

(Andreas) You give me too much credit. The colors of the buildings are the colors of Pittsburgh's buildings. The statue though... well actually it is onyx. It looked so unbelievable to my eye in the image that it became unplugged from the ideas I had of artist and city. I needed the artist to shimmer. Now, she does, eh?