©2014 Russ Widstrand

An abandoned mill is the subject of this photograph. I was taken with its abstract and rectilinear composition and it seemed a strong color statement to fit into the thread of today’s conversation.

Shadows are nearly as important as light is to a photographer, the two go hand in hand. The interplay of light and shadow most often mirrors the shape of its subject, sometimes however… shadows can depict something entirely different. This shadow scarcely mimics its host, it looks more like a crow than a butterfly. Perhaps that is why shadows have an ominous reputation of menace and evil, it lays in their ability to transform and shift into another shape. My shot of this butterfly transforms in more ways than one, apropos since transformation is the natural state of the butterfly during its early stages of development. It is the hard light of late afternoon sun that casts this shape-shifting shadow, almost as though the butterfly as specimen longs to take flight once again.

An uncanny pairing for today’s Daily Photo Game. I loved making this image at the Scottsdale Butterfly preserve, I remember making it quite clearly. The striking contrast between the dark shaded trunk and the iridescent pattern of the Butterfly wings was incredible. Nearly as incredible is how Robert’s image “Grin” and this image “play” together. It is worth seeing them as a pair, which our website does not offer unfortunately. So I have posted a version of them together here. I visualize the images for our Daily Photo Game as diptychs – the combination of the image preceding today’s photograph, or the image following today’s photograph – these visual conversations are the best and truest nature of our Game, IMHO. Like the brief shutter speed that captured this image, the butterfly flew off seconds later, and this photograph is the only temporal remains of that moment.

I love the collision of styles in this image. The abstract blocking of plastic strips hung from the dock ceiling combine with impressionistic and accidental imagery scratched and stained into the sheets of plastic. Like piano keys, they play a visual kind of music. The textures and Rorschach shapes contained on the plastic have a life all their own. I see a courtyard with two windows, alien faces, hands, a illustrative figure on a city street and a cacophony of abstract color and shapes. I have attached a magnified view as well. The compositional form animates well with diagonal linear and lyrical flowing design elements to move the eye around the otherwise formalistic grid structure. Backlighted color pops the complimentary blues and yellows keeping the attention centered in the composition. Discovering and capturing this image at a defunct paper mill was a real pleasure. The more time I spent with it during post-processing, the more I appreciated its subtle beauty, in an gritty industrial kind of way. As Robert points out, the remnants of what used to be, are good fodder for photographers. Enjoy.

The exploration of creating something totally new has always had an allure for me, spontaneously transforming an object or scene from the mundane into the extraordinary. This process is not always rewarded with success, but I keep throwing myself into this state of discovery… “let’s see what happens”. Robert’s image, “Transformer” reminded me a coil of corrugated material I had lying around – and a photograph I had recently made for the Game – but never submitted. The ribbed quality of the material harkened to the stepped-motion effect in his image. Sure enough, my hunch was rewarded with a strong connection between the two images. Interestingly, “Lizard Eye” can either come forward at you, like an eye of a lizard would, or it can recede back into space like the tunnel it really is. There is no digital trickery here, just the object and light. Its almost as though “Lizard Eye” is keeping a watchful eye out on Robert’s creation. Like two titans set for battle, who knows what might develop in this other-worldly conversation.

Continuing the alphabet soup here at the Daily Photo Game, I am playing this loosely connected image, “Y Not”. This was a product of yesterday’s Columbia River Gorge excursion, such an awesome place to hike and witness. However, as is my way, I am less interested in general photographs of nature without the fingerprint of man. This image spoke to me at first as a hand, then the rotational thought occurred to me, and then after seeing it in that orientation, I found the “Y” of it all. Cosmic. I liked the typographic narrative of Robert’s and Jay’s images and hope that it continues.

I spent the larger part of a day shooting images in my studio to pair with Robert’s photograph “View of a Window”, I made some cool images, but alas, the structure of my images did not marry well to his. Such is the nature of experimentation. So, I turned to my library and found this industrial image that shared a similar visual language. Let’s see if Mark continues this textural exploration, or takes us down a new path.

I recently was invited to take a tour of the Blue Heron Paper Mill, now defunct, abandoned and destined for gentrification. The site is literally right on the Willamette River, in Oregon City. This is the kind of special place where Native Americans used to pluck salmon from the waterfalls, but has been dammed for a power plant since 1895, but that is another story. This paper mill is special too, at least in my eyes. I am attracted to these industrial environments of old, I am not sure if it is the gritty textures, or something about the abandonment that speaks to me. My attraction and empathy could stem from the legacy of those who stood before us – for better or worse. The shear amount of concrete, materials and energy to build such a place, only to have the times change and the entire enterprise become obsolete, is in itself a haunting story. This image at first blush, may seem simplistic… another graphic photograph. However, I find that it tells a tragic story, the dead-end of a dream, a shadowed course, and the dangers of the industrial age. In addition, the composition is conflicted, the strong yellow graphics draw the eye toward the center of the image, typically this would lead to a point of illumination or the “hero” of the image. In this case, they lead to shadow, darkness and danger. I really liked Robert’s image “The Doors”, and seeing these images side by side really works for me… a simple composition playing off a textured nocturnal image. View more of my photography of the paper mill here. Please feel free to share with the buttons below and/or comment below that. Thanks!