On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
JanieM
When I started submitting posts to OTR in the fall of 2020, I offered sets of pictures organized around themes – lighthouses, state parks, fall color, reflections. I was a words and ideas person, and it would never have occurred to me to select pictures based on visual qualities, other than “That’s pretty.”
Working with Steve from Mendocino changed all that. I still organize some posts around themes (the field, weeds, redwood trees), but more often I just pick a bunch of pictures that I like at any given moment and that seem to fit together. Then I enlist Steve’s help in winnowing them to a set of ten and putting them in some kind of order. Finally I weave a story or topic loosely around the selected pictures, or just comment on some aspect of each one.
Steve’s sequencing is always visual first and foremost, and I’m learning to understand how and why he does what he does. A rough accounting of our conversation about this set, cleaned up for coherence, follows.
Steve: If you were to define our selection, why these particular photos have been put together, how would you describe it?
Janie: I had no conscious notion beyond the visual (geometry, color – variation), but interestingly, there’s no summertime in this set, and with a couple of exceptions it’s a collection of images that have a bleak beauty.
Steve: But I chose these ten out of your group of twenty. What did I select?
Janie: The geometry of all of them seems pretty sharply defined, and they start off bleak/gray/not that colorful, and progress subtly to more color, ending in the splash of #10. Before you sequenced them I thought they were … not flashy? — all understated except the ones that are now at the end. Now it seems to me to be a sequence of increasingly less … stillness.
Steve: I looked at the overall group and said to myself that the parking structure will always be the ugly duckling while still being beautiful in its own way. So I wanted to surround it with flash friends in a sequence that developed continuously from that initial rawness.
Janie: “In the bleak midwinter…” — the title of a mystery I once read, but taken from a poem, I remember not which one. [It’s a Christmas carol. – Ed.]
Steve: As a visual unit I think this is really good, but I could be wrong. It can take a while for my opinion to gel.
Janie: Leafing through them in order, each one seems to follow, and yet be a surprise.
Steve: Consider it in a larger framework than BJ, what if you had a 10-piece exhibit in a gallery. You’d want it to have a personality, a unity. I think this group and sequence has a strong identity.
…
Steve: Have fun making sense of all this in your write up. 😛
…
Steve: Feel free to gather up all my silly comments and use them as poetic quotes to illustrate the visual journey we are trying to create here: “Steve described this descent through a sterile underground and emerging into a magical blah blah blah – then he spoke further about feeling the winter in 2 – and how it’s expressed differently in 3” – but I’m failing to express how I imagine myself standing in each of these settings one after another and they all contribute a mood of bleak serenity.
Steve: On the other side of that underground portal
Steve: They’re lonely
Steve: Not in a bad way
Janie: My pics are mostly about the beauty of Maine, and it’s indisputably beautiful, but I haven’t paid much attention to the beauty of the bleak side of it.
Janie: And now — here we are…
Steve: At one point I thought of #1 as a secret entrance to the wonders of what follows. I see this as a visual journey with not a little fantasy. And the weaknesses of some of the photos are bolstered by their neighbors.
Steve: The colors of 2 and 4 are more harmonious but the geometry is too similar and needed splitting up.
Janie: #6 — I have been back and forth on that picture since it joined the club. Sometimes I think it’s lovely and sometimes I think wtf, kinda boring.
Steve: The hints of bright red in 5 are too much for that picture but it works as a prelude to 6. The hard geometry of 6 carries forward in the cityscape that follows.
Steve: 6 and 7 are nice to each other.
Janie: But they’re flipped (in a good way) — sky at the bottom in 6 and at the top in 7 — I like that.
Janie: The one with the flowers gone to seed doesn’t really fit with the rest…….
Steve: I see the opposite; it has that bleak beauty that runs through these, and I like that. You’ve got a series of hard geometry and then 8 just explodes in chaos while being faithful to the color and feel of its neighbors.
Steve: #8 transitions nicely into 9 and distracts from the weaknesses of the latter.
Steve: #10 recalls the strengths of 9. The whole point of 10, btw, was to end on a less bleak note but still with an echo of it.
Janie: Even the glorious fall color at the end is … fall color … which is an ending presaging four months of harsh times. Fall color counts as “pretty,” but it also holds the promise of what comes after.
HinTN
That first photograph, with the beguiling bit of red in the distance, is just a fabulous composition. I also like the reflected tree, where the detail is in the reflection. All are interesting but those two are great, imo. Thanks to both of you.
eclare
The last photo is beautiful, I love the reflection.
Spanish Moss
I love the theme and the photos, and I really enjoyed the visibility into your thought process! The Readfield beach one is my favorite.
There go two miscreants
Completely orthogonal to your discussion, but I enjoyed looking at these with my model-railroading eye; #2 and #4, and especially #7 all have good elements for a model vignette.
MomSense
Oh my goodness! I’ve been to almost all of these places – save your back field. It’s so interesting to see familiar sights through someone else’s eyes.
On the downtown Augusta pic, you can just see the balcony of my son’s apartment if you zoom in on the right side behind the yellow pedestrian sign. He has the only balcony on Water Street. I’ve had some lovely days sitting out there with him watching the world go by.
Albatrossity
Fascinating journey into the mind of a photographer/artist. And lovely pictures that do tell a story!
Thanks!
MomSense
@There go two miscreants:
I love model railroads. The river runs along the back side of the buildings on the left in photo 7 and behind the stone building is near the start of a trail that runs next to a rail road track that hasn’t been in use for a long time. It’s called the Kennebec River rail trail. https://www.traillink.com/trail/kennebec-river-rail-trail/
teakay
Thanks for these photographs and detailing the thought process that goes into taking them and arranging them. When looking a photography exhibits, I never gave much thought about one picture’s intimate relation to another. You and Steve are helping me to see photos and art exhibits differently, more fully.
pieceofpeace
To begin, I was drawn into a theme of lush bleakness, starring water, trees, light, shade and sky, plus minor items. Then ,the narrative was read as it followed the pictures. You’re speaking of arrangement of pictures, visually, and how the previous picture ties into the next photo, by color, feel, scene theme, such as still vs. churning water. Using this provides an unfolding of the overall set.
I’m on board to apply this to pictures, a sort of tidying-up and tie-together exercise that brings them to a nice flow visually. Thank you! I look forward to playing with this idea, as soon as I find time…..
UncleEbeneezer
These are all very cool. The emphasis on bleak-beauty reminds me of the tv series, Tales From The Loop which was based on the sci-fi, digital paintings of artist, Simon Stalenhag. I like when artists see, capture and share the beauty in places that aren’t where I would normally look. So I really love these. Thanks for sharing.
mvr
Thanks! This is interesting and connects with a reaction I had to Steve’s series the other day, where I thought the whole thing was more than just the sum of its parts. I will think about this for a while. (And the downtown makes me wish I could easily get there since I like old stuff.)
munira
This is great – the photos and the comments.
TEL
Absolutely wonderful story and theme to these photos. I really like the first photo as well as the idea that it’s a gateway to the rest of the pictures. The bare tree reflecting on the water is also one of my favorites.
StringOnAStick
Lovely; thanks for adding the comments about why they were chosen and the order of presentation, really illuminating!
Sandia Blanca
Photo #2 reminds me of a favorite song from my childhood, “Down by the old mill stream.” Thank you for these lovely photos from a part of the country I’ve yet to visit.
cope
What a thoughtful piece of work you have created with words and pictures. It would never have occurred to me to put as much effort and thought into making this post as you have. My OTR submissions tend to be of sequences of events and I usually play them out along a linear timeline. What you have done is on a whole different level.
Thank you.
stinger
Outstanding, thank you both!
JanieM
Thanks, you all.
I’m still having fun on this learning adventure, especially in terms of seeing the world in a new and evolving way. And I mean that literally, not in the sense of having opinions or constructing theories about life, but in terms of how I look at the beauty around me, and the unprepossessing parts too.
@MomSense: I didn’t realize your son lived in Augusta. Pre-covid, I used to have Sunday breakfast at the Downtown Diner pretty often. Haven’t gone back to indoor dining yet….
You’ve mentioned spending time on Maranacook before. If you’ve been specifically to the Readfield town beach, you’ve seen my my back field. ;-)
Someday maybe we can meet up and say hello.
MomSense
@JanieM:
He moved to Augusta over the summer for a job opportunity in Waterville.
I guess I have seen your back field! I do love Maranacook Lake and have so many happy memories there.
We should definitely get together. My son has taken me on some cool hikes. One is in Hallowell with a really nice views of the capitol building. Would love to get together – maybe go for a hike and take some photos.
JanieM
@MomSense: At the moment I’m bundled up to go back outside in the new snow with new boots (!!!) — so for now I’ll just offer this, in case you don’t know about KLT and would like more trail options. Later we can figure out about getting in touch.
Tehanu
It’s by Julia Spencer-Fleming, the first of a series about a Vietnam vet who is now an upstate New York cop, and a woman Episcopal priest who’s also a military reserve helicopter pilot and who comes to live in the cop’s home town.