Monday, September 19, 2011

Welded Steel

Welded Steel

So this is one of those completely abstract textured surfaces. but at least there are two contrasting textures here. It's a close-up section of a roughly human-sized sculpture along the Hudson river made up of (apparently) these little bits of stainless steel welded together into something indescribable - I should take a picture of the piece from a distance or maybe just link to someone else's image. It points North. It's also possible the welding in some parts is just laid on top of a solid sheet of stainless steel.

I'm not satisfied with this composition - that large piece with no outer boundary in the upper edge near the middle bugs me and leads the eye out and away from the photograph, but I can't crop it any better (I tried) unless I change the aspect ratio, which I don't want to do.  I may re-shoot it later in the week. if so I'll replace the image here, which may be a violation of blogging etiquette, but I'm announcing it in advance...

UPDATE
9/21/2011 Replaced original photo with this version.

5 comments:

  1. Hey Mike, really cool shot... how about getting a closer shot of just the welding... I like the shot...

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  2. Thanks Gerry - I can definitely get a little closer. I'm having trouble lining up the sensor plane (used to be the film plane) with the plane of the surface I want to photograph, which is another challenge...There ought to be tool for that in macro photography :-)

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  3. The welding patterns are quite remarkable. Very well illuminated (looks like day light from top right ish). Is this B&W or just lacks any colour? It looks good.

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  4. Bill - it was an overcast day, but the sun behind the clouds would have been to the right (and above, of course) so that was probably the brightest part of the sky - working with contrast accentuates what would have been naturally more subtle, perhaps. This is B&W - the stainless steel is pretty reflective and I didn't like the colors.

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  5. On an almost microscopic scale, those patterns of fused steel left by instantly melting and cooling layers are similar to the way some volcanic lava cools forming these layered wave fronts on the grand scale.

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