An early alley
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost four years since I took this photo.
I’d gone to Abilene, Texas, for the weekend to meet up with a friend. After she headed back home I stuck around town for a while and took some photographs. This was before I’d figured out the wealth of interesting things a photographer can see in downtown alleys, so I only took a few shots. Now, of course, I’d take a few dozen shots. Per block.
But maybe this is where I started figuring out about alleys….
Abilene, Texas
photographed 4.3.2010
Posted on December 10, 2013, in Photography and tagged 365 photo project, abilene, abilene texas, alleys, black and white photography, downtown, melinda green harvey, monochrome, one day one image, photo a day, photography, texas. Bookmark the permalink. 14 Comments.
One Day | One Image 
As much as I like this shot I must say that I don’t do much alley shooting these days. It seems that most of the alleys worth photographing are in some (what’s a good word) unsafe parts of town. In the days when I did shoot alleys I shot very early Sunday mornings, a time of day when all was quiet and I felt relatively safe walking around with an expensive camera. The police have stepped up patrols on these high crime drug infested parts of town but it still isn’t a good idea to be wandering alone in my opinion. I don’t do it now. I’m not saying that the alleys you shoot are like this and that you don’t take reasonable precautions, and I don’t mean to put the fear into you, but please – be safe.
LikeLike
I appreciate your concern for my safety.
As much as I love photography and shooting old buildings and alleys and etc. none of it is worth putting myself in unsafe situations!
LikeLike
It’s always good to see a shot like this where the photographer has gone to the trouble of correcting all the verticals. It makes such a difference to the geometric content.
LikeLike
Thanks, Andy. Non-vertical verticals tend to catch my eye. And not in a good way, either. My friend Brett Erickson (do you know his work? – http://brettlerickson.wordpress.com/) thinks I need a tilt-shift lens, and he may be right. However, there’s the matter of the cost (a lot!) and the learning curve (steep!) that have held me back…
LikeLike
Thanks for the link to Brett’s blog. I’ve never owned a tilt-shift lens and never will. Yet one more piece of kit to consider carrying and I rarely have any difficulty correcting verticals. The biggest problem that occurs with lens correction is that part of the original image can get moved off the image edge during the correction. If I notice that is happening and the ‘lost’ bit is important, then I re-start by enlarging the canvas sufficiently in the required direction so that the bit I potentially lose remains on the canvas and is retained as part of the final image. I hope that makes sense…
LikeLike
The other part of using a tilt-shift lens is that it doesn’t fit my style of shooting: I don’t like to spent ages setting up one shot!
As we’ve discussed before, my evolving Photoshop skills let me salvage shots that were not usable. Fixing verticals and converging verticals is something I’ve been working hard on learning. Enlarging the canvas is a trick I use as well (I’ve got a shot queued up on the blog in a few days where I did that very thing).
LikeLike
Sounds like we are reading from the same page, Melinda.
LikeLike
Yes, it does! What version of Photoshop are you on? I recently upgraded from CS 5 to the CC version; I like it a lot, even with the monthly fee I’ve got to pay.
LikeLike
I’m using CS5 – I really haven’t quite grasped yet what is involved in the CC version. It seems like I don’t have an option if I want to upgrade, but I don’t like it when I put in that ‘take it or leave it’ situation.
LikeLike
The part I DID like – enough to jump on board, eventually – was that the CC version is always updated. I am kind of dork about wanting the most current versions of, well, nearly anything…
LikeLike
I need to remember about converging verticals too – I have only ever corrected them in one photo, at Melinda’s suggestion. Lightroom has the ability to do it, so I won’t need new software, just more awareness.
Nice alley – a good place to start on a multi-year project!
LikeLike
…but after Ken’s warning about alleys, I might have to rethink it….
LikeLike
I think in the small towns you might not need to worry about the kinds of things he was warning about. More likely it will be icy stairs, or rotten floors that are more dangerous.
LikeLike
The biggest threat to my personal safety is very likely to be my inherent clumsiness!
LikeLike