Midtown, NYC, 2022.
Too many pixels and not enough colors at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51893928686/
#photography
This was captured early afternoon on a clear day with a Rodenstock HR Digaron-W 50mm/4.0 (@ f/7.1) lens, Phase One IQ4 150 Achromatic Back (@ ISO 200) and Phase One XT camera (10mm vertical shift). 760nm IR filter, which effectively blackened the sky.
This is an abstract view of modern midtown skyscrapers, as perhaps Georgia O’Keeffe might have seen them. The composition is a nod to the Precisionist school of a century earlier, emphasizing the lines and essential geometry of the buildings.
This image plays with the boundaries between realism and more abstract schools like Precisionism and Cubism. While it’s a realistic image in the strict sense that it’s a straight, basically unaltered photograph of buildings, it deliberately omits elements that might distract from the abstract lines and and shapes that make them up. The black sky (aided by the IR exposure) and harsh, almost threatening diagonal shadows add to the unreal feeling.
This photo was particularly influenced by two O’Keeffe paintings from her time in NYC, almost a century ago (during her Precisionist period). She lived (with Alfred Stieglitz) in the building at the far left.
See
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/manhattan-34289and also
https://collections.artsmia.org/art/2725/city-night-georgia-okeeffe@mattblaze@federate.social really interesting thread, thank you. It’s surprising how much effect the black sky has, there isn’t a lot of sky in the image but it looms over everything
@mattblaze@federate.social
Pretty sure some of those buildings are old enough to have built back when everything was black and white …
