Until now, I've never really thought of my photography in terms of projects—that is, in terms of long term choices of subject and/or style that might add up to some sort of larger whole. Series of daily posts or single blog posts about a topic or event were the largest sized chunks that I'd think about.
But in the past few weeks, as I've gone down a rabbit hole of listening to photography podcast after photography podcast, I've grown more aware of photographers talking about their projects—these ongoing works intended towards some eventual, curated whole, but whose end form isn't often very well defined in advance. While examples are many, the ones I have in mind are things like Kyle McDougall's project on the American southwest, discussed occasionally in his podcast The Contact Sheet, Neil Kramer's Quarantine in Queens, and Angela Douglas's Slowly Drowning. Work like this appeals to me because of its blend of top-down and bottom-up structure—while some intention drives the activity of going out and taking these photos (or, in Kramer's case, taking these photos while compelled to stay in), it is regular practice and the passage of time that give the photographer the perspective that enables them to say when it is done and what photos comprise the end product.
I'm hoping to turn the practice I started during my break—doing street photography in downtown State College—into one such project of my own. Though I'm a drive away from downtown, I'm there or pass through there often enough that I can do it somewhat regularly. And, as I am in year four of a six year graduate program, there is probably going to be a de facto end to the project in the future, which should provide just enough of a framework to keep me focused on getting out and taking photos as consistently as I can.
This is a bit more intentional than street photography I'd done in New York, in which I'd mostly take photos on the way to and from work. But I hope this intentionality helps me pay more attention and think more about not just getting a shot, but getting a good one. So I'm hoping to dig in, spend some time, and get a better sense of how light, shadow, and the flow of traffic and persons behave in this particular place at various times of day throughout the year.
That was the idea behind these photos, taken this past Thursday between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. with a Ricoh GR II (shooting in JPG using the high-contrast black and white effect). I tried to keep an eye out for good light and interesting compositions, and also to start taking some mental notes on where to go and what to try and shoot if I'm downtown early on a weekday. Here's a bit of what I found.
There's a stereotypical street photography shot that often comes up on Instagram in which someone is walking into or out of a hard shadow cast against a wall. In one episode of The Contact Sheet, Sean Tucker joked about how this move isn't really all that hard to do. So I decided to make it a goal to try and do it that morning, and while this isn't a perfect example of it, surely enough, there's a spot on Fraser Street where a shadow casts a hard line against the wall at this time of day, with an added bonus of this happening against this tiled wall. As Tucker said, not all that difficult to find, but probably requires just a bit more patience and time to take the shot at just the right time with just the right subject crossing that line.
Since one of my goals for the day was finding interesting light and shadow, I did find College Avenue to be a bit of a dud, in that the sidewalk opposite campus, where the shops and restaurants are, is largely in shadow at that point. There was, though, this tableau across the street, with Penn State's iconic Old Main in the background. Only during editing did I notice the reflection on the roof of the car in the foreground.
I feel like the physical infrastructure of State College is very much on display. Maybe it's just because I was going through alleys to get from spot to spot, but looking back through the photos I shot, there are plenty of power lines and, on the sides of buildings, wiring and air conditioner tubing. It's enough that that infrastructure could probably be a sub-project in itself.
Its presence in some places and absence in others in a way marks the passage of time, as blocks of irregular buildings with their wires and tubes become replaced by large high rises.
