Pictage PartnerCon 2010 ~ New Orleans, Louisiana

Critiquing your work is not the easiest thing to do, but if you don’t do it, how will you ever improve? Lately, I have been making a conscious effort to analyze my composition and intention. And with a little motivation from Jared Platt’s New Orleans photo contest, I forced myself to select my favorite image from this year’s Pictage PartnerCon. As I was taking this picture my thought was to have the lamp and the chair to be the main focus. This composition was the result of my intention. Your eye is drawn to the light, but you cannot ignore the red, empty chair. I also wanted the image to portray New Orleans, but most of that was just luck. The red lamps glared at me as I walked across the doorway so I had to investigate further. That is when I wandered inside and found my shot. All of these items added to the overall subject matter of New Orleans: vintage pictures, a fireplace mantel littered with objects you would find in New Orleans; and, if you look closely, the business card below the lamp reads, “Wicked Orleans.”

I opened my aperture to f/2 because I shoot with a Canon 5D and I do not like to go beyond ISO 1000 if I don’t absolutely have to. My shutter was set to 1/40th of a second as my hand is pretty steady, and the lamp gave quite a bit of light so my ISO was set to 800.

At first I didn’t know why I selected this image above as my favorite picture. Then I sat down, took a better look and it hit me all at once. I am that chair; alone, but always looking at the bright side of things. Photography is changing and so is the world around it. But we need to be thankful for the things we do have, as life can easily be worse than it really is.

Although I just read it recently, this quote has really resonated with me, and apparently it is often said, “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde

This image above is from the Rebirth street car excursion. The next six images are from a night at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar. The funny thing is that the piano player was making fun of us being “hot shot” photographers with “fancy” cameras, but we didn’t care. There were more of us than there were of him.

This image directly above is the one I took during Jared Platt’s workshop. The words written on my cards were lines and isolation.