Yellow with ring

Canon EOS 1N using Kodak Portra 160NC

This is another example of me shooting the same subject over and over with variations in time of day, equipment, and composition.

Here’s the digital version taken in June of 2007.

I like the color in the original better. Not because it was shot on digital, but because it was taken on a bright, cloudy day (note the lack of a harsh shadow). However, I like the composition of the new, film version better. There’s a lot more negative space, which makes the minimalism of the composition all the more minmal. Almost to the point where the ring just happened to be in the picture.

Of course the question I tend to receive about a photo like this is, “why would you want a photo of that ring?” The answer is always that I wasn’t shooting the ring, so much as shooting a rectangle of wall that contained the ring. This idea of shooting rectangles is really the core of my style. Yes, I know it’s the bassis of all photography, but we know what I mean. In my case, for a photo like this, I’m not so much capturing a scene as cutting out a piece of that scene in a way that says, “Here, this is art. Put it on your wall. I know It was just sitting there, but now it’s art…Actually it was art all along.”