12-08-2018 / Personal Visions #7: The Withered Clock
The Withered Clock
I hereby present the seventh entry of the Personal Visions series: The Withered Clock.
Technical commentary:
It may not look like it, but this was a particularly difficult shot to make.
I know, "how hard is it to shoot a non-moving object?" right?
The answer is "very hard" when you read the fine print on this particular photo.
The final result you're looking at had to be achieved using several of the tricks I have learned throughout my career. For obvious reasons I won't go in depth into all of them but I will discuss a few aspects that helped this image come together.
The first thing you need to know is that this picture was shot during the last moments of twilight (when the sky is about to transition from blue to black).
That meant that I couldn't just point & shoot carefree because I was restricted to slow shooting speeds.
That restriction was imposed, in part, by the lens I was using: a telephoto lens. If you don't know what that is and without getting too technical about it, it's basically a lens designed to look at objects that are far away from you or to augment the size of their details without sticking the camera on their face.
Unless you're using those telephoto lenses used by sport events photographers (often nicknamed "bazooka lenses") which allow a lot of light through them, you're forced to work with lower amounts of brightness.
So was my case. While the telephoto lens I used allows a decent amount of light through it in low light, in this case it wasn't enough.
In order to compensate for that, I had to use a slow shooting speed but this meant that if I moved too much, the image would be blurred and ruined.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the longer the lens is, the more obvious and annoying the movement under which the camera is operating becomes; be it that you're shooting at an unstable platform, the wind is blowing or your own handshake while holding it.
If you want to get a sense of just how annoying the shake can be at long distances, check this video. Notice how the shake is remarkably less noticeable as the view becomes wider and the mountain looks farther.
Let's add another layer of complexity that should be obvious already: I was aiming the camera upwards, in other words, shooting at an angle. That meant the weight of the camera on my face, more specifically on my eye.
So let's recap: low lightning conditions, long lens being used and shooting at an angle.
How do you solve this?
The short answer is: Git gud.
The long answer is: you need to practice a lot under these conditions until you're able to get a picture that's sharp and still and not blurry and out of focus. The only exception to the above is if you're intentionally going for that.
Once you get that nailed down, it's just a matter of focusing properly through a dim viewfinder and make sure you don't ruin the shot by pressing the button to take the picture too hard.
If it sounds hard or complicated, that's because it is. This is one of the things that people who don't know about photography completely disregard when saying "I could have made that photo".
The right answer when you hear that is: "But you didn't, so zip it!"
I only made 4 shots of the clock, and all of them are different in regards to the composition. They all look different.
There are only 4 because that's all I needed. By now it should be clear that I don't like shooting without a concept already drawn up in my head about how I want the image to look like. I also don't believe in the philosophy of taking 500 pictures of the same thing and hope one of them looks good. If 1 shot won't do, 99 more won't either. At least that's what I think.
The post-processing part of this image in particular was pretty straightforward compared to previous entries. I knew I wanted it to look decayed and worn out but I didn't want it to look like something from the 1800's. I actually wanted it to be timeless.
Nailing the look was a much faster process than actually taking the shot. I knew I could make it, but I had to solve several layers of complexity in order to get the result I wanted. I mentioned 3 of those layers but if I recall correctly, there were 7 problems that needed solving at the same time in order to achieve the image I was seeking for.
Interestingly enough, there are no other versions of this shot. This time the process from capture to post-production was quite streamlined.
But that kind of efficiency and certainty is only achieved with the experience granted by practice and forethought.
Personal commentary:
I've always loved clocks and watches. This particular clock is 119 years old. Installed in 1899 on a clock tower with a Moorish design, it was commissioned and built in order to provide the city of Lerdo with a public clock that resembled the ones found in other important cities in the country after having achieved the official status as a city in 1894.
Unfortunately, the clock has fallen in disuse and decay due to a lack of maintenance over the years, which in turn has granted the look displayed in the picture.
That was the key word for me when taking this shot: Decay and the irony of how an instrument meant to keep track of time was lost in it and succumbed to its effects.
I don't know exactly when the clock stopped working, but by the looks of it, that occurred a long time ago.
Even though the clock tower was built at the end of the 19th century, I didn't want it to have a look from back then. I wanted it to be timeless because that's precisely what the clock is right now: timeless. It only gives the hour accurately twice a day by mere inertia...
To me, the face of it is melting away, which I tried to underscore and enhance by adding the corona on the left; so it would look like it's burning slowly.
The light streaks on the right help to underscore the fact the clock is stopped and thus, the space-time continuum has been broken, so light is leaking where it shouldn't. Like a damaged video tape showing colors where it shouldn't.
The color was chosen to add drama to the whole idea behind the picture. It also helped to make more prominent the humidity stains around the clock's edge, adding more emphasis to the notion that it's decomposing like a dead corpse.
The contrast between the light and dark areas on the clock's face was highlighted with the same idea in mind. In the original capture, the difference is visible but it's not that stark.
The detail on the wall beneath the clock can be interpreted like fungi that's been eating the tower away; it's been so long since someone paid attention to it, that other beings are now using it to survive themselves.
It's sad when you realize that a lot of things can be kept going if only you apply the necessary maintenance at the proper time. It will probably turn out that the maintenance to keep this clock going will have been cheaper in the long run than to invest again in reactivating it.
But a lot of people unfortunately prefer to cause the problem and fix it instead of preventing it in the first place.
How long can that be done before time runs out?
It was ten minutes before nine o' clock sharp
That is when the trumpets in the sky blared loudly
The wind suddenly halted
There was only...
Silence
We should have seen the signs
It kept warning us
But no one bothered to look up and realize
The time keeper was no longer keeping time
We didn't notice the absence of the tick tock
We failed to see the scars of light all around us
We turned a blind eye to the sky burning above us
We disregarded to keep the clock going
Time was running out
Who the hell knows what was it that we were waiting for
Now the clock is burning and withering away
The same fate awaits for us
But the only thing I can now ask myself is
Why was it so complicated to prevent it?
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