Just realized I was taking photos wrong at the old paper mill in Holyoke

I always shot wide angle to capture the whole room, but after seeing someone's close-up of peeling paint on a pipe I understood it's the small details that tell the story better. Now I look for cracks in the concrete or rust patterns instead of just the big machinery. Has anyone else had that shift in how they frame their shots?

2 comments

2 Comments

sage_perry9d ago

Yeah but does it ever feel like you're just trading one cliche for another? Like wide shots of big machinery are boring but close ups of peeling paint with some fake vintage filter are basically the default mill photo now. I guess I'm asking what made that shift actually stick for you instead of just being a phase. Was it a single shot that finally clicked or just slowly realizing your own photos were all starting to look the same. Because I've had that moment too but then I swung back the other way and now I shoot a mix of both. Trying to find the middle ground where the small details actually have context from the bigger space around them.

julia8439d ago

Oh man, that bit about "trading one cliche for another" REALLY hit home for me. I went through the exact same loop you're talking about, where I got sick of my own wide angle mill shots and swung HARD into the close ups of rust and chipping paint and old bolts. But pretty soon I realized all my photos looked like the same grimy little details with no sense of place, you know? The thing that finally clicked for me was this one shot I took of a broken conveyor belt system, I pulled back to show the whole thing surrounded by that giant empty floor, and it just WORKED because the little broken part had the whole scale of the factory to make it mean something. Now I force myself to stand in one spot and take both the wide shot AND the close up from that exact same place so they actually talk to each other. That middle ground you're talking about, where the small stuff has context, that's the gold right there.