My very first window.
In my six month Mentoring program, I often work with photographers that feel that they have run out of ideas and things to shoot…tired eyes!!! They need a little pat on the old Caboose if you know what I mean. Besides working on the elements of visual design and composition on their Artist Palette, we’ll work on a self help photography project (another name for a photo essay). I’ll offer several ideas based on their main interest and off they go with new found energy and a higher kick when placing one foot in front of the other and moving forward.
I’ve been able to motivate my students by talking about my personal project I’ve been working on for the past three years, and showing some of the results. I call my project “Window Dressings”. Here’s my essay and how it started:
I started my series of windows three years ago quite by accident. I was driving to Nashville from Houston because my all-natural Bloody Mary Mix was included in the gift basket that was to be given to the presenters and award winners at the 2008 Country Music Awards. I had decided to drive to Nashville to take some extra time photographing the countryside. On the return, I drove through a small town in Mississippi looking for any interesting subject matter. As I was leaving town, I decided to take one final left turn before getting too far away from what was left of the downtown area. It was the face of serendipity screaming at me to pull over when I noticed an old deserted building that had an interesting front door.
It was enough to make me get out of my car and set up my equipment. Halfway through my setup, I became bored with the light since the door was in shadow and walked around the side where I saw several old and interesting windows that were in bright sunlight. I settled on one particular window, and even though it had weathered poorly through the years, there was something almost mystical about it; I knew I was onto something. It was one of those feelings you get when something affects you in such a way that it would wind up consuming the better part of your next three years…and still counting!
I finished and was breaking down my equipment when I noticed an old man, whose tattered clothes suggested that of a homeless person. After watching for a time, he approached me and asked if I would tell him why I was taking a picture of the windows. I said that I found them to be beautiful in their own way, and I wanted to make prints some day. He looked at me then the window, nodded and walked away. I called out to him and asked if he knew what this building use to be.
He stopped, turned around and with a mouth filled with a few remaining teeth said, “Sure, it was the bank. It’s where I kept all my money.” With that, he walked away.
Now when the urge hits me, I gather up my equipment and my dog Gertie, and we hit the road and begin “Window Shopping”. I rarely see anything worthwhile on the Interstates, but I use them to get to the small cities and smaller towns. There’s no rhyme or reason as to which exit I’ll take, and as far as which direction to turn once I’m off the Interstate it’s pretty much Eeny, Meeny, Miny Moe.
In just about every small town in Texas there is a square where all the roads coming in from each direction end up, and that’s where I head first. Starting from the square, I pick a direction and follow the road until I’ve been out of the town for several miles. Then I turn around, head back to the square and pick another direction. I keep doing that until I’ve exhausted every possible way in and out. This is usually where I have the most luck. That and the roads in-between each town usually affords the best chances to find that illusive window…that one in fifty, strong enough to make it onto my Canon 5D Mark II’s CF card.
So what’s my criterion for a keeper? It has to have at least six attributes going for it: Light, Color, Texture, Pattern, Shape, and Line.
As I always say to my online students with the BPSOP, and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, Light is everything. Unfortunately, I can’t always shoot at Golden Hour since I’m continuously driving to get as miles as I can in a day. A lot of the time I’m shooting in the middle of the day when the light is harsh. The key to this is to not show the sky and underexpose a lot, which isn’t much of a problem.
The Texture is important as I want the viewer to want to touch the windows. Patterns within the window are also important, and has the rhythm of the patterns been broken. Line is the most important of all the elements of visual design, so how the windows use line to take the viewer around the window, and the different types of lines are critical. Color is obviously the most important quality, and it takes more than a painted window against a painted wall for me to stop. How time has affected the color, if additional color was applied over the existing color, and how the different colors compliment one another are considered. The Shape of the window is also important. It’s amazing that when you start looking, how many sizes and shapes windows come in.
All I can think of after all these years is that I’m involved with some kind of weird and peculiar courtship with these windows. Each window has its own personality and winds up the way it does when all the criteria falls into place. Father Time aided by the elements, does its thing in transforming the windows into a cacophony of colors, shapes, lines, textures, and patterns.
The direction the window faces, how much of the day it’s in bright sun, is it exposed to the wind, all are important pieces of the puzzle in determining the final look of a window when I photograph it; result can be incredibly alluring. The decaying charm of a window that’s morphed into a “work of art” has a certain persona that needs no further explanation than to say that its beauty lies in the eyes and minds of the beholder.
Now as I travel throughout the states “window shopping”, I always try to imagine what the windows I photograph could tell me if they could speak. Did they look out at a backyard filled with the shrieks’ of children at play? Or the manly hoots and howls coming from a periodic family reunion, or birthday party?
The large majority of structures have long since been abandoned, and I can only wonder who the last person was to look out this particular window, and what they might have seen and thought before they left for good.
As is usually the case when I’m taking photographs, I am always searching for a unique angle or height when I’m out shooting; not this time as there is a voice that tells me not to distort the integrity of these amazing windows. Perhaps it’s the spirit of better days gone by.
These windows are photographed as they exist today, and use virtually no help from Photoshop. Three of my windows have made it into the permanent photography collection at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Texas.
Here are just a few of my windows. If you would like to see the entire collection of one hundred and sixty, you can go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78440307@N06/sets/72157629317463102
Prints of these windows are numbered and there’s only an edition of twenty-five. For more information, you can contact me at: joe@joebaraban.com.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, follow me on Instagram www.instagram.com/barabanjoe/, and check out both my mentoring program and my 2023 workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
