Week 2 of our weekly image. So far I’m loving doing this. It’s a way to kind of branch off from the norm of my everyday photography and look at the world a little differently and find art in even the most obscure places. When you driver around with the intention of photographing something you start to see things a little different; from the way colors and lighting look. Objects you would probably drive by without giving a second thought, you begin to take notice. It’s pretty awesome, and it’s one of things I really love about doing a weekly image. Life is definitely fast paced and there is so much beauty around us that we seem to miss because of our busy lives. The weekly image allows me to take some time to just kick back and enjoy my surroundings. Because of this, I challenge everyone to do some form of weekly image. You may not be a photographer and it doesn’t matter, do it with your phone. Spend 30 minutes each week to just take time to take notice of your surrounds, look for something in your own community that you may have never seen before. Trust me, I’m in a town of 2000, it’s possible.
So for this week, I decided to go with a railroad track. It’s cliche, but you know, sometimes cliche is fun and/or interesting. There is something peaceful about an empty railroad track, and yet something inspiring. The tracks seem to go on and on without an end and the more you look at them the more you become lost in it’s never-ending span. These two tracks in particular are ones I drive over all the time and at times as the sun is setting, the sun will sit right in the middle of them and the trees make this perfect frame around the sunset. Of course, that was not the case tonight, but still it was an amazing scene. However tonight I decided to work on my editing a little more. The sunset looked nice but the clouds were a little heavy for my liking, so rather than try and capture everything in camera I decided I would capture the tracks the way I wanted and then edit the sky.
I realize that some people look down on this, and I used to as well. Then I got to thinking, imagine if you went to the theater and watched a movie how it was originally shot. Before any color correction, before any added lens flares, before any extra features plugged in. Even the most basic movies go through extensive editing. You can’t make mother nature work for you, sometimes you have to work with what you’ve got and make it work later. Plus, in my signature edits, I plug in skies, add flares, etc. I do whatever to make a scene in the way I want it to look so this was a fun refresher. Ultimately, the weekly image is just something to have fun with and hopefully it encourages others to have fun with some photography and not worry so much about the business side of things or keeping up with trends and such, just go out with your camera and have some fun. That’s what I did with this image and I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.
