I have to admit that part of going through this whole portfolio building exercise is guilty pleasure; it’s fun to rediscover images from ten to twenty years ago that have stood my test of time. It would be too grand to say ‘the’ test of time, as it is just my judgment of the work that I have done over the past couple of decades. Also, there is a sense of progression in my images, which is part due to learning my craft a bit more all the time and part due to pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
Today’s image contains a little bit of both of those dimensions…
This particular railroad crossing is one that I travel across almost every day, as it is close to home and on a main road. I remember that I sort of caught a little bit of the view out of the corner of my eye, which told me to park and take another look. It was both the color and the direction of the light that held something of interest.
When shooting this with my iPhone 5 (it was 2013), I noticed the significant amount of lens flare with the light coming in from the left; instead of covering the lens, I decided to leave it to see the effect that it would have.
As you can see in the image, the colors on the left hand side are more washed out and there is a clear demarcation of the sky, which coincides with the tracks in the far distance. I liked the sense of two worlds touching that this evoked with the mystery of what might be ‘down the line’.
