Model train set

The lighting and colors in this series by 野糞日和 makes the scenes look like they’re from a model train set. They’re outdoors but they look like they were taken indoors with color film balanced for sunlight. The only technical detail included with these pictures is “Nikon PC 35mm f/2.5;” the photographer was trying out a new lens.

I can’t even begin to hazard a guess about where the particular qualities of light in these photgraphs came from. The light that was there? The film? The development? The printing? The scanning? Post-processing? Are there two seperate images superimposed: one day- and one night-time?

These technical details are important in understanding why this photograph was made. If you can work backwards through the process, then you can try to imagine what the photographer saw that made them release the shutter, why they chose this frame out of all the exposures that they made.

But this can all be forgotten if you just want to approach it as a photograph, and understand how it works. The broken horizontal in “02ec337d,” cleaved by a strong vertical, which in turn is anchored in the upper left corner.

It’s not better or worse to take into account how a work of art was made. But whether or not you do will effect the actual sensation you have when experiencing the photograph &c.

I recall one particular instance of this: a still life at the Michener Museum some years ago. The painting depicted a number of objects sitting on a mantel. I remember the tones as gray and somber. The painting wasn’t particularly remarkable to my eyes until I noticed a small explanation that accompanied the caption: the artist had painted the objects from memory.