17/365 Jan 17, 2011 More Americana

Everywhere I look I see signs of a struggling US. Today I focused on so many companies and stores that are out of business. 


Here are two examples.  By the way, to continue my personal argument,  this is documentary photography. Documentary should not be equated with dry and uninteresting. I do try to set up and take the photo so that it looks good, too.  :)  In the first photo I tried to set up to get the balance that is shown here. I did it by increasing the focal length a little bit. I was actually standing back about 10 feet from where it appears in the photo that I am standing. I think it worked. Good balance from the light standards, to the pillars, the cars and the parking lines.  Also, in both these photos I did a bit of dry "darkroom" fixing. In this first photo, there was too much exposure in the snow and the sign.

f 3.9   1/80 sec  ISO 80  FL 55mm  (Lumix)

In this second photo I really wanted the "Available" sign to have major impact. Without it the story would have been less interesting. Also the sign brought color into what was an almost colorless shot. Because of all the snow, the white building and the grey sky, I had to increase the contrast somewhat. I had to be careful because I wanted observers to be able to read the sign in the store window.  By the way, if you click on these photos and view them at much larger size, you will see lots of white dots and flecks in both shots.  That is snow which was coming down fairly hard at the time I took these (c. 2:40pm).

f 3.9  1/400  ISO 80  FL 25mm (Lumix)