Critique #3 (5 person, 1 image/participant)

[Bryce]

Firstly, I'd like to thank you all for your responses.
This photo is part of a series I did a couple of years ago while still working as a machinist. I was trying to document American industry in its death throes... So what better than old fashioned B+W news film? The scene in front of me was so astonishingly timeless that I tried to place something obviously from the present in each frame, hence the coffee cup. Sounds like it worked, aside from seeming a little awkward to some.
I shot quickly, and of course only when I had a moment when I could safely ignore my machine, so the pictures look a little rough. I didn't own a rangefinder at the time, though I'd have been much better served by one for this series! I kept an old Pentax with a 28mm lens in my toolbox. The film/ developer was HP5 and Rodinal.
Concerning Ampguy's questions, the machine is a vertical boring mill, basically a lathe turned on end with a 7 foot diameter chuck. The part being turned is the frame for a rock crusher(!)
In hindsight's 20/20 I'd have maybe used shallower DOF, but at the time I was trying desperately to make the stuff on the nearby table recognizeable...


-Bryce

 

[nomade]

Thanks for all your comments, i'm delighted really...

First question: What is this?😀 It's very abstract to me, even though it resembles some pieces of timber. Grain is all over the place, but I don't mind that. I'm looking forward to an explanation of how you did this. And I like the patterns: Circles, waves, lines. And what about the colors? I'm having a hard time picking them out, is it color film? Some kind of advanced processing?

Perhaps some photoshopping? There are some lines running from bottom to top, that breaks with the other waves and lines. And (believe it or not), try cropping out the lower parts of the image, it gives a much stronger focus on the lines at the top. And I sure like those lines! I've attached a cropped version.

Well this was shot on the door of a fleuriste(flower store), he dries orange slices on that timber wood, it was still early in the morning, so they were stacked together, i liked the lines of the door(i donno what you call the iron large type) along with the wavey pavement, so i just hit the button...

It was an expired german B&W film called Tura, a kodak normal processing, but this film is grain rich, it's also iso 400,

The colors, the pavement is greay, the door is steel color, the timber is timber...

Your cropping is quite interesting and quite different, guess it cna be cropped in different ways, giving different senses and different feels to it, your cropping concentrated more on the circles...because maybe it looks a bit messy with all the lines, circles, wave patterns in there 😀

 

[nomade]

I understand how you feel about it Mango, i don't have a meaning myself, but it provoked me and that was it, i was surprised with the amount of grain i found after processing it, it was beyond my expectations, all for the better though.