Cem,
My tardiness in giving your picture the attention it merits is merely due to compelling duty to deliver pictures for 2 major event shoots that have been delayed by testing the 1D flagships.
As you may have noticed, I’m particularly drawn to images with show paths or stages in journeys. You have generously shared numerous such images before. This, however, is rather special. Like Dawid’s bridges in South Africa, for example I had to think a lot. So I decided to put off comments until I could grab a block of time and do justice to your contribution.
First where is this bridge? There’s and area in the older part of the Dutch port city of Dordtecht called The Vleeshouwersstraat or the Butcher’s street! It’s just a modest street with small galleries and workshops and it leads to this 1856 iron bridge, the Lange Ijzeren Brug.
Cem’s B&W picture is something new. In short, Cem shows the bridge after an aggregate of small choices that are different from the common tourist pictures we may have seen before. So how does one focus the brain on the “bridgeness” of the bridge, rather than the tourist scene? Part of the best photography is the ability to choose what to focus on and present that and not all other distracting stuff, however pretty. This sounds so self-evident, but it’s not so easy to accomplish such ”disassembling” of what everyone can see. If you do it well you have found much of the essence of photographic artistry. So I am venturing to examine and identify how this might be achieved.
Point of view: Choice of where to shoot from:
Cem shows the structure foreshortened in its point of view. The bridge is not only shown from one end, and not spanning the water, but also blocked off half way along the bridge. Cem shows a point of time when the bridge span seems short. In fact this bridge has two stationary portions at each end and the center sections lift up to allow water traffic to pass. So we can see the proximal center bridge section being lifted up. If one didn’t realize this, one might not notice this at first.
Choice of B&W: Pictures I have seen before, as I now recognize it, show bright “tourist” colors, white and color of the buildings on the far end of the bridge on the other bank. Also boats are generally all colors and bright white too. In daylight and in color, peripheral objects can easily distract from the splendor of this dark impressive iron structure. While the bridge, brightly lit, is in itself, always interesting and memorable, often, it merely is in the picture, not the picture.
Black and white allows us to not be drawn to unique colors all over the place. Black and white allows the bridge to be the only subject.
Decreased DOF: Further limitation of out attention is achieved by having the distal part of the bridge relatively out of focus.
I would try to cheat and dim or blur the other structures, but that’s not necessary. Here, however, with this (night shot?) we have all our attention on the bridge itself.
Meaning: Wait, it might not be so straightforward. The focus actually appears to be the barrier to motor traffic before the bridge bearing the name “Lange Ijzeren Brug.” So now we have to relook at the picture from this point of view. With this consideration, Cem's photograph now seems to me about the paths that are protected for us in out heavily industrial society. Life, after all is a journey. Here, time stops when the center of the bridge is lifted, brings us to a halt. The wood pathway, the antique wrought iron railings return us to a less rushed time and we cannot keep on our way. During this breather we can pause to deal with the present and each other. We might think that after waiting a while that we are going to cross the bridge; but maybe not! Perhaps we’ll turn around and have coffee with friends. There’s a lot to talk about.
Asher
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