PJClass: Feature

David Hobby, a former staff photographer at the Baltimore Sun, also known as the Strobist, once joked on his blog about his editor telling him "Hey, I see you have 15 minutes between your afternoon assignments. Can you find me some weather art? Make it a vertical, okay?" I don't know the truth behind a quote like this, but after doing this assignment, a question like this would probably bring me to my wit's end.

This was a tough assignment. To find a slice of life in a candid fashion in a part of town that you are very familiar with is no simple task. As Monica Lopossay puts it, "Sometimes we get so caught up in our lives that we develop 'tunnel vision.'" I was definitely feeling the tunnel vision.

The shot I eventually got, shown at the top, was originally disappointing to me. The unedited image was a very wide shot of the store front with a car passing by. The exposure was just a stop underexposed (half of the finished image is underexposed as well, but I didn't touch it because it works as is, IMHO), and it was just a very busy picture.

After some inspection, however, I looked into the details of the image: the fact that Shane Gullivan is sitting on a barstool on the stoop of his shop, the "tragical" word/theme, the manakin staring Shane down, "no solicition", the 410 area code, and the initial perception that this might be two images combined. Perfect details to show, and nothing that a tight crop couldn't pimp out.

That's right. PIMP out. How do you like them apples?

Next assignment: News

Maybe I will catch a fire, or a crash, or maybe a beating.

Or a podium shot. Sigh.