Monday, April 14, 2025
If you will remember, a little over a week ago, I hosted a Photo Walk workshop in downtown North Wilkesboro with John and Bill. If you haven’t visited that blog entry yet, go check it out real quick. That was the first part of the workshop with the second being a virtual image review and discussion which happened last night. This is a new part to my workshops and seems to be a hit with all the participants. It gives us a chance to see things through each other’s eyes and discuss how the images were seen and captured. This is particularly helpful since we were all looking at the same things through the day in the same conditions. It really makes the whole workshop even more of a learning experience compared to my earlier workshops where we went through the capture phases of the photos, but didn’t have any opportunity to discuss the images in a group setting.
During the online meeting last night, I shared some of my images along with Bill and John. It was a great chance to review what we had done through the day and work through some difficulties that might have popped up. As it turned out, I left that meeting rather inspired not only from discussing my own photos but also from seeing theirs. I’ve always said that I learn as much from hosting these workshops as I hope to teach, and this one was no exception. I saw things that I missed and saw examples of successful photos that I had not been totally sold on when helping them with the compositions. Things always look different on the big screen as opposed to the back of the camera.
By the time this morning rolled around and Toni was wanting to go to Winston to get some errands taken care of, I decided that I would go back out to the location of the last workshop and have another go at it. I was looking for only a couple of photos and figured that I could knock those out pretty quickly. Both of my ideas had come from John and Bill with shots that they had done during the workshop. Of course, I had my own way of seeing the scenes, but the general concepts came together because of their ideas.
I ended up leaving around 9:30 which would get me out there during the best light. The sky was generally clear, and I wanted the sun to be up high enough to provide some shadows in the different scenes. When I got there, I made my first stop at an alley that we had spent a fair amount of time. I had helped Bill work through some filter issues as he was working on capturing the vines on the side of the building. I had spotted those during my early morning scouting and thought that they would be interesting to work with and was happy that Bill had started to compose an image with them. The problem that he was having with the filters got both of us a little frazzled and it was eventually determined that he was blending a polarizer along with a variable ND filter. This was causing all kinds of problems and is something that is not all that well known. When we finally got that problem figured out, he stuck with the concept and shot several frames of the side of the building. I ended up working another section of it with a similar concept which I had pointed out to the group when we arrived.
Not wanting to jump on Bill’s composition, I didn’t attempt to shoot his scene while we were there. I had planned on coming back after the workshop was over and giving it a try then. That didn’t happen as I was getting kind of tired, and the light was different at that point. I did look forward to seeing his interpretation of the scene when it came time for the image review. Sadly though, this was not one of the photos that he submitted because he was just not happy with how it turned out. I really hated that it didn’t come out well because I was really looking forward to seeing it.
I had an idea of what it was going to look like, and I knew how I might have approached it differently, so that was what I wanted to start out with. I looked at the wall and started to figure out what parts of it I wanted to include and what parts needed to be omitted. It was looking like I was going to need a wide(ish)-angle lens to make this work, so I opted for the standard zoom, and kept it on the wide side. I really liked how the vines seemed to originate from a single trunk which turned into my visual anchor. I included the conduit at the base of the building for a bit of extra geometry to the scene knowing that the vine would carry the eyes over that line at the corner. I filled the rest of the frame with more shapes and textures until I was happy with the overall look of the frame. There was a nice triangle of sky with some clouds above to balance out the colors.
It wasn’t all that I was hoping for, but the end result is one that I am happy with, and it does show what my concept had been when I first saw the scene. I don’t recall exactly how Bill’s composition looked, but I don’t think that as much of the wall was included in his. I was concentrating more on getting the three filters that he was using to stop arguing amongst themselves so that he could get the photo in the first place. I do still wonder what his ended up looking like.
Not wanting to spend too much time in that alley, I decided to head off to my next spot. Next on my list was another shot that I have worked many times over since I first came out here. It is about two blocks down from where I was currently, and it was in another alleyway. The inspiration had come from one of John’s photos and after seeing how the different textures came together, I wanted to try my hand at the shot. However, before I could get there, the handicapped ramp to the art gallery caught my eyes. I liked how the angles looked against the brick wall. It was kind of abstract and all about lines which is one of the things that I look for during these photo walks.
After looking at it for a moment, I found the right angle and decided that I needed to switch lenses for the telephoto zoom. This would allow me to pick out the sections that I wanted to deal with as well as give me a little less depth of field. I knew that I was going to want to blur the wall and keep the focus on the foreground railing more than anything. This shot didn’t take but a minute to shoot and there isn’t anything particularly special about it, but it does show that you can make a photo out of just about anything if you let your mind be open to the possibilities.
On my way to the second alley, I recalled seeing a tile entryway to one of the stores that I had pointed out during our walk. It had the possibility of becoming a photograph, but nobody wanted to give it a try. Since I had brought it up, I wanted to get the shot and show what I was thinking when I saw it. I already had the right lens on the camera and spent just a few moments looking around for patterns and angles that would work. There was really no color in this scene, so I knew early on that I was going to be shooting this one as a black and white composition. I wanted it to be abstract as well with the focus on the high contrast of the scene.
I picked out the corner of the wall near the doorway and used that as a focal point that brought the eyes into the patterns of tiles. It was a pretty simple composition and one that was really devoid of scale or context. I just liked the repeating patterns as well as the angular nature of the wall. This was about as simple to shoot as the railing had been, but much easier to process. It is not one of my stronger images, but it was a fun one and a good opportunity to show as an example of what can be done on one of these photo walks.
After my two little detours on the way to the second alley, I finally made it and started to look at the scene. Just as it had appeared during the workshop, the shadows reduced the contrast down to nearly nothing on the scene. It wasn’t all that inspiring to look at, but John had seen the potential in it and gone ahead with the shot. In the past, I had done some compositions around the area that he had homed in on but hadn’t really worked it in the same way as I was looking for more contrast in the scene. As we were discussing his photo, I did a couple of quick tweaks to the edit on it and found that I really liked how things were looking with just a few adjustments made. The base composition worked well, and Bill and I both really liked how the photo turned out.
Now that I was here, I decided to put my spin on the composition which included a steel beam as the foreground with some rust on it and a wooden sign just to the left. as I had suggested, John composed the image in a way that omitted the arrow leading down the stairs which put the “Suite 03” near the bottom of the frame. He had included a lot of the exposed bricks which I really liked and had a good deal of negative space to the left of the main scene. The way that I saw this scene was a bit more concise and focused more on the hard elements. I went against my advice and included the arrow that pointed down and to the left. The one saving grace for that choice was the fact that the arrow was darker near the point which kind of neutralized the want to follow the arrow out of the frame. Essentially, I used the rule of thirds here to compose the image because there were three main elements that just happened to fall along those points while the arrow actually followed the golden mean which gave a little more validity to the composition. I had liked the negative space that John had included, but I wanted to really get into the textures of the scene and tell a slightly different story.
As with John’s photo, mine came out very flat and kind of subdued for what I had wanted. I had expected this because that was what the scene had looked like when I shot it. I also knew how I wanted to process the photo to get it exactly where I wanted it. This was one of the longer edits that I did on the photos from today, but there was a lot going on with this scene that I wanted to really capitalize on. When it was all said and done, I was thrilled with how it came out. All of the textures just jumped off of the photo and brought it to life. It is another interpretation of the scene from what John had come up with, but the original idea sprang from his mind. When we had walked into that alley during the workshop, he had been drawn to that area without any prodding by me. It was the same area that had grabbed my attention on the first visit several years ago. It is just a natural point of interest in a pretty run-of-the-mill alleyway.
I had captured the two scenes that I had wanted to get and could have easily gone home at this point. However, I was just a few feet away from the Pelican which had opened recently and had a really nice repaint done when they opened it up. There were some very vibrant colors that just don’t usually appear in downtown North Wilkesboro. I’ve considered photographing it before but have never come up with a good composition. I wanted to bring the workshop out here, but with it being a Saturday, they were opened for business and there was no way to work the area without being in the way. After walking over there, I found out that the business was closed, and I had the opportunity to find a composition or two.
As I mentioned, I loved the colors of the building but could see no composition right off. It took me a while to realize that I was drawn to the concrete beams at the by the order window. There was a yellow barrier post that was close to one of the beams which seemed to work well in terms of color. Beyond that was the turquois of the main building. These colors worked well together, and I started to work out a composition that would pull it all together. The key here was to not see this as a building, but as lines and shapes. I started playing around with the framing until I had something that made sense. I then dialed in a depth of field that helped to reduce the visual impact of the window reflection while keeping the focus on the shapes and colors. With that, I fired off a few shots with some slight variations because I knew I was going to be changing the aspect ratio when I got home.
I’m not saying that this was a particularly hard shot to make, but it was something that didn’t really feel like one of my images when I was putting it together. I loved the concept and have seen similar photos done by other photographers and felt that I wanted to give it a try. In the end, I was quite happy with how it turned out and think that I made some good decisions in the composition of it. I know that the colors were just amazing and I’m glad that I took that chance to capture them.
As I was walking away from the Pelican, I spotted a fire hydrant that I had seen during the workshop. It had stood out to me because it was relatively new and bright yellow. At the time, it was just Bill and myself and the workshop was coming to a close. I had another spot in mind to shoot and didn’t really think much about this hydrant. However, now that I was looking at it once again, I saw a lot of promise to it. It wasn’t so much the hydrant that got my attention as it was the color of it. It was the most colorful thing in the area and to really make it pop there were three muted colors of pavers on sidewalk. Near to the hydrant was an access cover for the water supply that I kind of liked even though it was going to be upside down in the photo. The other part that really prompted me to stop for the photo was the curved wall behind the hydrant. That curved wall worked so well with the hard diagonal lines created on the sidewalk.
All I had to figure out was the height of the camera to get the relationships right knowing that I was going to change the aspect ratio when I got the image into Lightroom. Once I had the elevation figured out, I moved from side to side slightly until I had the right diagonals with the sidewalk and the right placement of the curve above the hydrant. I wanted to have a triangle relationship between the hydrant, the edge of the wall, and the water point. I was able to get this accomplished pretty easily and I had the shot.
On the way back to the truck, I stopped at one more spot that I have walked by many times before but found it to catch my attention more this time. There was a boarded up window right at the sidewalk which was interesting enough. However, there was a bright yellow curb which I really loved and went well with a small bit of conduit above the window. The composition almost made itself with the window being the focal point and the hard diagonals adding visual tension. The bricks brought in some beautiful textures and the gradient provided by the paint that had worn off of the wall completed the visual interest to the scene.
I had to make quick work of this one because I was having to shoot it from the middle of the street. Fortunately, this was not a main road, but more a back access. There were two cars that came by while I was working this scene which caused me to stop what I was doing briefly to let them pass. I ended up with two variations on this scene and it was the very first photo that I shot that turned into the keeper. This was also the last scene that I shot for the day.
I had been in downtown for an hour and 15 minutes at this point and had shot a total of 35 frames. I was actually kind of surprised that I culled them down to ten frames to look at closer. Of those, I decided that these seven were worth keeping. Most of them I am happy to add to my portfolio, and a couple of them are good illustrations for concepts that I had come up. It had been a very successful trek, and I owe the drive to make it happen to Bill and John who seriously inspired me after reviewing the images from the workshop. I think that we have each made the rest of us just that much better after this experience. That is what it is all about…or at least should be.
Thank you for joining me on this trek, and I do hope that you have enjoyed it. Don’t forget that I have another workshop coming up in May, dealing with decay subjects at their finest. There are still slots open and I’m happy to have you along. It will be a very educational experience, and you really don’t have to know much at all about photography to be able to get a lot out of the experience. I hope to see you there!
Until next time…
