The Artful Engineer

During our time in Alabama, we tried to explore the area within easy reach of where we were staying in Madison, immediately west of Huntsville in northern Alabama. One of the first places we went was Decatur, a city on the Tennessee River. There were several nice historic neighborhood walks featuring many different styles of home, almost all well-tended and including a few with impressive columns like the one above. This house was obviously intended to have curb appeal and—when constrained to standing on that curb—this straight-on perspective seemed like a solid compositional choice. The foreground swans flanking the walkway also help to fill the empty space of the still-dormant lawn. The irregular shadows of the trees over the entire image are a welcome addition, too.

The house below was apparently built from a kit plan that was available at the time and there are reportedly more examples scattered across other states. It was early spring and the tree was just starting to bloom, but those blossoms matched the house perfectly. Since I wasn’t going to wander in people’s yards, finding a workable perspective was a little challenging. I’m sure I could do better with free rein of the property, but I think this manages to show off the most striking feature of the house and makes good use of the tree.

This next image is obviously more about the yellow blossoms than the house behind it. Whenever flowers are in direct sunlight with shadow behind, there is at least some potential for a nice image. In this case, the yellow trim, subdued in the shadows, matches the blossoms and the green house coordinates well.

In addition to wandering through the residential areas, we explored some of the city streets. The building below featured some nice red windows that were striking against the bone-white walls. I liked this section, in particular, with the red door and unusual asphalt-tiled awning. There are a lot of different textures in this image, which I always appreciate, and the angled blinds are a nice detail that contrasts with the otherwise strict horizontals and verticals. The random stones on the ground add a little disorder to the scene. I like this image a lot.

This next image is starker, almost entirely black and white with just a hint of blue in the window panes. Everything is smooth and pristine except the rough and discolored stone window sills. Only the variation in that discoloration and the slightly raised blinds break the perfect symmetry.

If you follow this blog, it’s pretty obvious that I like making images of walls: walls with windows, walls with doors, walls with drainpipes, etc. I also tend to like straight-on views for a variety of reasons, both practical (it often keeps distractions like a bright sky out of the corners) and aesthetic (using symmetry as a foil for some interesting detail). One benefit of a regular blog like this is that it gives me the chance to see my tendencies. A reality with the straight-on compositions of walls is that the images don’t usually have a lot of depth. This next image shows one way to add some to that kind of composition by using a foreground tree to frame the subject. The subject here is definitely the bricked-up arched window. And despite the brightness of the tree, it remains a supporting element. This is a very blue image: the blue wall is all the bluer for being in shadow, and even the tree is lit by a cold light. It is tempting to warm up the tree in post-processing, but I think that would be a mistake: while it would contrast even more with the brick wall, it would also attract more attention and compete for subject status. Positioned as it is, it really wouldn’t work as a subject.

I hope you enjoyed these images of Decatur, Alabama. It’s an interesting small city that we enjoyed visiting, not least because of Tess’ Place, a tasty ice cream shop. Next week I’ll have more images from Decatur, but focusing on less pristine details.