I'm not sure where I sit on this image of mine. Here's some background:
I shot this image of the Ares V motor text at ATK here in Utah last September. This is an image that is part of a larger body of work about Utah's Great Salt Lake.
Originally I had planned on only using one of the images, but I thought it might be interesting to show all four images of the sequence...
It's printed in pt/pd on Arches Platine.
Anyway, I guess where I'm at is that for me it isn't really tugging at me emotionally the way I'd like it too. I'm not sure what I can do to make it tug any harder.
Before I totally dismiss the image...or at least put it away for a while and re-visit it in a few weeks or months...I thought I'd throw it up here and see what feedback I could get.
I don't really like the hands & p&s camera in the foreground.
The scenery + fireballs says Afghanistan rather than Utah, based on the web image anyways. Perhaps in the context of your presentation it will be different.
You could stack the images, overlapping about 50%, then you'd crop the hands and show the fireball better.
I think it would have worked better vertically. But that is probably just me. There is nothing really in the left half of the frame and you cut off the top of the subject and perhaps part of the more interesting foreground and included some accidental hands.
Rockets, even ones on the ground are all about reaching the heavens.
I love the photos the way they are. The whole thing refers to the history of photography in a wonderful way. It has that great old feel to it especially due to the printing process but also because the subject is in a way temporally generic.
Although you could make the argument that the guy holding that camera in the one frame brings you into the present and breaks the photographic illusion I think that in fact that person is what makes the photos so effective. He is reminding you that there is photography taking place and that since he is modern, it is taking place right now. It's that reference to that past and the present at the same time that makes the photos so much about photography.
Let me explain. As far as I'm concerned, that guy with the camera in that photo becomes me like when I'm looking at one of those old albumen photos from Egypt, for instance. But then the switch happens and I become him, I become that witness in your Michael and that's the trick, the real illusion of "point of view", the photographic illusion.
Can you tell that I went to grad school? I do really think the photos are wonderful the way they are. Those photos aren't about the explosions. The way they are laid out is perfect also. I think that that guy being in the second photo only really makes it all happen. Your instincts about them are dead on. I love it when something is really about something else.
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