The Artful Engineer

All but one of the images in this set were taken on the same walk as last week’s post. I separated the images between last week and this week primarily by theme: last week was mostly walls & windows, this week is more industrial-looking subjects, like the storage tank, above. I love the mix of cold gray and warm oranges, as well as the strong sheen on the left side that slowly fades away into darkness on the right-hand side. As I have mentioned before, I deliberately do not render any of my images into black-and-white, but I do like color images that are monochromatic or nearly so. The gradation of tones across the top two-thirds of this image is very much like a black-and-white image.

This day was overcast, and I have kept the white balance cool because artificially warming the images completely changes the mood away from the stark, forlorn, and almost lifeless feel. That said, this next image for some reason is a lot bluer than the others and perhaps I should take the edge off and move it from the “cold” to the merely “cool” category. If I put this image in a gallery with the rest, that will probably be necessary. As for composition, the bits of sky showing clear through the building help tie the left side of the image together with the right side, and for that matter the dark power poles echo the dark windows going the other direction. I think the power lines themselves help point at the thin muntins showing through the lower windows, too.

This next image is all cold grays and not-quite-warm brick. The perspective—looking upwards—helps accentuate the angles of the rooflines and give the image some life. The focal point here is the highest window with the broken panes, but the three windows make an interesting set: their identical size connects them, but each is unique. The top window has (mostly broken) glass in every pane, the middle window is sloppily boarded over, and the lower window is completely empty. I think this variation adds some interest. The bits of light visible through the lower windows help connect them to the background sky, too.

This next image is a messy assortment of strong lines. Since almost all of the lines radiate from a point just above the top left corner, they are all tied together into a semblance of a coherent arrangement. There is some risk of these all pulling the viewer’s eye out of the frame, but the looming tower is able to resist this and the overall effect is of looking through the diagonals to the upper left corner of the tower. The bird is a happy bonus here: I don’t think it adds life to the image, exactly—pigeons are a lot like rats in that they frequent abandoned places—but it does add some movement. My building images usually have perfect verticals and sometimes perfect horizontals, too; this image has neither. As I have said before, having a weekly blog helps expose your tendencies; I’m going to have to work on finding more compositions that break these patterns.

This next image is a little more typical for me, where the verticals are all rendered vertically. I like the way that the pipes and guy wires all point to the tops of the two structures. The one on the left is more prominent because it is larger and higher, but the one one the right provides some counterpoint due to its dark red color. It is important here that the right corner of the rooftop hut doesn’t overlap with the structure on the right—that bit of separation makes the image better.

I drove under this railroad bridge quite a few times during my couple days in Cheyenne and wanted to photograph it from the outset. I love the color palette here: a cool overcast sky, cool silver-gray bridge truss, and warm gray concrete support. I usually try to avoid including bland overcast skies in my images, but this image—and quite a few of the others in this set—work well with bold graphic shapes against the bland backdrop. Certainly clear blue skies would have given all of these images a very different feel, and probably harsh shadows to boot.

Thanks for joining me on this little photo-wander around Cheyenne. Next week will still be in Wyoming, but will feature a set of images that could not be more different than these.