Tuesday Photo Challenge – Human Impact

Welcome to episode 23 of the Tuesday Photo Challenge!  Last week’s theme of Path invited some beautiful images and wonderful outlook on the road ahead (or less taken).  As you can well imagine, I had a bit of a challenge to follow up this theme, as a lot of the images that I examined had to do with making progress, climbing and the like.

Then I came upon the image here, which reminded me of something completely different, and, possibly, something that may stir up some emotions one way or another.  The theme that I’d like you to use in this week’s challenge is Human Impact.  I’m going to leave a lot of the interpretation up to you, as this impact can be either positive or negative (or neutral).

What I’d like you to do in addressing this challenge, is to elicit an emotion from the viewer.  When you look through your viewfinder or at your LCD panel, while composing the shot, think about how what you see will be perceived by others; what can you change in your composition to heighten the impact?

I came upon this former railroad bridge while walking down a rail trail with my wife and one of our dogs.  The graffiti struck me, because of its clash with the environment, but also because of what it did to this very rusty, out of place bridge.  It really asks the question whether it made the scene better or worse…

Now, I’m a fan of really good urban art, which graffiti can truly be.  Some of my friends are graffiti artists, who create fantastic work.  It’s not for everyone, which most art isn’t, but has a definite aesthetic that can stimulate the mind.  What do you think?

For those who’d like to participate in this weekly challenge, the rules are the following:

• Write a post with an image for this week’s topic
• Please tag your post with fpj-photo-challenge (if you’re not sure about how tags work, please check out this WordPress article about tagging posts)
• Create a pingback link to this post, so that I can create a post showing all of the submissions over the week (note: pingbacks may not appear immediately, as my site is set up to require approval for linking to it; helps against previous bad experiences with spamming)
• Have fun creating something new (or sharing something old)!!

Let’s find out what human impact strikes us and how it can stimulate our minds!  Have fun!

Technical Details

This image was captured with a Canon EOS 5D MkIII using an EF 24-105mm f/4 lens.  The exposure settings were bracketed around 1/60 second, at f/9 and 400 ISO.  I then used Photomatix Pro to create this rather grungy look for this bridge.