One of the areas of my photography I continue to working to improve is my ability to find compelling subjects in the details of a scene. I see a lot of images on the internet that emphasize patterns or shapes or some other intriguing detail, and I know that, had I been in the same location at the same time in the same conditions, I probably would have walked by it and never noticed it.
But, every now and then, I will create a photograph that draws attention to the details of a scene. This picture is an example of one of those times.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Denver, Colorado, for a work trip. Having never been to Colorado before, I didn’t know what to expect, but I made sure to take my camera gear with me. I even took my tripod, which was accomplished by removing the tripod head from the legs and packing both in my checked bag. A big risk, I know, but it worked out.
On my last morning in Denver, I had packed up all of my belongings and was waiting to go down to the hotel lobby to catch a ride to the airport to head back home. I looked out the window of my room, which I apparently had been too busy to do prior to that morning, and noticed some office buildings across the street.
At first, I didn’t pay much attention to them. If I’m going to photograph architecture, I prefer buildings that have “character.” When I think of architectural character, I think of the old buildings and houses in Washington, DC where I almost feel as if I’ve gone back in time. I’ve always enjoyed walking through some of those neighborhoods imagining what it must have been like to be alive when the only way to get around was by horse and buggy. Although, to be honest, a lot of those buildings probably aren’t as historic as I think they are.
Anyway, the office buildings outside my hotel room window in Denver were definitely not what I would consider historic. They were just modern buildings that seemed very uniform and bland just like nearly every other modern office building. There was absolutely nothing about them that captured my imagination.
But, as I looked at those buildings, I began to lose sight of them as buildings and started to see something entirely different: patterns of repeating horizontal and vertical lines. I quickly set up my camera and framed a composition that would fill the frame with the pattern of lines while eliminating as many clues as possible that would immediately indicate this was a building thereby creating a more abstract look.
To process the file, I converted the picture to black and white to eliminate the slight blue and orange tones the scene was picking up from the overhead sky. I then increased the contrast to enhance the difference between the lighter parts of the buildings and the windows. The result was this final photograph.