The Making of "Diversion"

The winning image in our "Converging Lines" photo contest

By panonski in Photo Contests on Aug 20, 2015

The winning photo - "Diversion"

It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was walking around with my old body and companion in making art, Ricoh GX 200. It is always in my pocket or even better in my hands.

I shall not compliment my Ricoh GX 200 too much here, since its superb optical and physical quality has been proven many times, and its brother, the GR, lives on now in its sixth generation as the GR II.

So, like I said, I was just roaming around like I often do, especially if it is a lovely day. I decided to turn left to the railway tracks and found myself in a wilder scene with a lot of empty old trains and track with rust, lots of iron and black oiled wood everywhere:

Scene - Click to Enlarge

I like such a setting for shooting because I always feel that it is right there just for that purpose. To tell the story of the past, like some poem.

I decided to take this shot when I noticed the symmetry of the track in a front of my feet and saw how the rails converge, also symmetrically. I concentrated my shooting on the rails, without any other objects in the frame.

The most important thing here is to notice how the sun reflects from the steel of the rails. Without that reflection the rails wouldn't stand out as they do here.

I was carefully positioning my camera to emphasize that reflection of the sun light and to avoid burning the highlights anywhere. Finally, when I got the composition and EV compensation right (-2 EV), I took the shoot and got exactly what I was looking for.

At home I noticed a little bit of a  tilt of the image. In the interest of perfection the photo must be in perfect balance and symmetry so I corrected the tilt. I always make the objective of compositional perfection my top priority when I select my subject for shooting.

Tilted

Corrected

In post-processing I created two versions of the photo, one in color and one in black and white and I submitted the latter.  Click on any thumbnail for a larger version:

Original

Black and White

And that's it.  The compositional element— pure symmetry in this case— is the key cause for the numerous associations that an image may invoke in your head. It can lead to many thoughts.  The real goal here is to have everything in one photo.

So I'm really glad that this image was voted the winner of the Pentax Forums June, 2015 photo contest.  Thank you all, and stay inspired!

Best regards,
panonski