It always amazes me how the right conditions can take something that is so ordinary that I never pay any attention to it and transform it into something very interesting.
I was working at a location on the opposite side of town from my office. Because I wanted to avoid as much traffic as possible (I hate traffic!), I was arriving about an hour before I could actually enter the building. That turned out to be perfect because I could sit in my truck with the windows rolled down and enjoy the cooler morning air and listen to the birds singing as I checked email and caught up on the latest news.
The first morning I arrived, I pulled into the parking lot and noticed this lamppost. I found absolutely nothing about it all that interesting. It was nothing but a lamppost. In fact, the only brief thought I gave it at that time was to wonder if it was one of those new lights that is supposed to reduce light pollution, and that was the end of any further consideration of it.
But, a week and half later, the situation changed. I pulled into the lot and parked as usual, opening the windows and listening to the birds. But, unlike previous mornings when the sky was as clear as it could be, I realized there was a thin layer of clouds in the sky. Within what seemed like a matter of only seconds, the clouds began catching the color from the impending sunrise.
That’s when the lamppost grabbed my attention with the dark post providing a stark contrast to the sky’s various shades of orange and blue. I quickly grabbed my little Canon G9X point and shoot camera that I always have in my truck, zoomed to the longest focal length the camera offered and snapped the picture. A few seconds later, the sun broke over the horizon, and the moment was gone.
Opening the image on my computer, I liked its minimalist look, and I thought that could be emphasized by converting the picture to black and white. However, when I made the conversion, the sky became a bland gray background with only very slight variations in tone. So, I reversed the conversion and left the image in color. I then cropped the photograph into a square format and then positioned the lamppost on the left side of the frame making sure to leave some space between the post and the edge of the picture to create this final photograph.
I have found the G9X is not the cleanest camera when it comes to digital noise, so I always have to do some noise reduction on the pictures I photograph with it. Normally, I tend to remove as much noise as I can. But, in this particular image, I decided to leave a hint of noise in the photograph to try to give it the look of having been shot on film, especially since I had originally planned on creating a black and white image. I would love to hear your thoughts on whether or not this works for the color version.