This kind of made me chuckle-snort the first time I saw it, but I’m pretty sure it was just some dumb high-schoolers trying to be clever.
June 8, 2007
prank
Posted by Josy under asphalt, black & white, graffiti, Ocean Township, road, street, street art, urban[16] Comments
June 8, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Normally, by this time, you have 39 comments.
As the duly elected representative of your followers, I state that we are speechless.
June 8, 2007 at 2:33 pm
::laughs:: 39 comments! That’d be fun.
I realize this photo isn’t quite as strong as many of my others- or nearly as pretty- but it makes me snicker a little.
June 8, 2007 at 7:49 pm
High school>!??!?!?! Clearly, this is elementary school artists at work: the penmanship is an absolute A-!
June 9, 2007 at 12:15 am
You ever tried spray-painting on the ground? If it isn’t a specially-constructed spray can (with a special nozzle that points directly up instead of out), things can get very messy.
Things LIKE PENMANSHIP.
June 9, 2007 at 12:32 am
Would it not then be canmanship?
June 9, 2007 at 1:13 am
WELL I GUESS IT WOULD
June 9, 2007 at 7:36 pm
i’d have to disagree, josy… i think this is one of your stronger images…
let me explain…
for me, a strong photo is one that is well crafted… that succeeds graphically… that has content that itself draws interest… and, most importantly, that works because it is a photo… or that works as a photo…
take your self-portrait, for example… you could grid that off and rework that as a painting… in fact, you could make an exact translation of the image… and, if you have the craft to pull it off, it would be just as interesting as a painting… perhaps it would be more interesting as a painting…
in contrast, if you tried that with this, i think something would be lost… it somehow relies on the fact that it is a photo to be interesting… it relies on how a photo is seen for the content to have its maximum effect…
additionally, with this image, you made some really good choices in terms of craft… the high contrast really works – the texture of blacks and near-whites in the asphalt is lovely… you’ve used the medium to make the subject more interesting than it is/was in real life… and it is a change that is a fundamental/seminal tool in photo…
all that aside, i like the composition… the word, which occupies a marginal position balances the empty space of the asphalt… because, i think, we (the viewers) are attracted to text…
i also like the irony/bad-immature-joke-pun of the text… it is almost like a simple conceptual piece itself… even if it is juvenile… or, rather, the kind of thing that smart-but-too-young minds favor…
finally, i love your comment on the work… specifically, ‘it was just some dumb high-schoolers trying to be clever’… that bit tells me more about you than did your self portrait… well, maybe… but it tells me a lot… and i like that…
in fact, i wonder if you could you use… maybe you could stencil your comment/thought on the same asphalt (in black?)… and rephotograph the graffiti… with your comment on the bottom… that way they would occupy the same surface… which would be interesting… and you could photograph them a few times over time… the fading would lend something to it as well…
ok… ramble complete…
June 9, 2007 at 7:37 pm
(laugh)… damn… that is long… sorry…
June 9, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Never apologize for long comments! Unless they’re boring. And I’m way too egocentric to find a long rant about me to be boring.
In terms of its success as a photograph, a large portion of it is a prime example of beginner’s luck. Not to say that I’ve never composed a photograph before, but it was just… something that caught my attention (especially with the reeds’ shadows)… I photographed it… and I tried to make something good out of the crummy picture I took.
On the other hand, I busted out of my comfort zone by breaking the rule of thirds (horrors!), and looking at this photo, I’m happy I did.
The more removed from high school I get, the more I look back on it and see how freaking IDIOTIC everyone is.
e.g. A few weeks ago, on this same asphalt path, I came across a SNAPPING TURTLE crossing the road! (I didn’t have my camera.) I stopped to watch it… and a few seconds later, along came some boys on bikes- late middle school? high school freshmen?
One of the boys stood back, like me, to mostly watch… but the other one tormented that poor turtle for several minutes. I couldn’t bring myself to be his mother and tell him to PUT THE TURTLE DOWN, YOU JERK!, so I stuck around in hopes that maybe my quiet “tsk-tsk”-ing would encourage him to cut it out. No such luck. I got fed up after five minutes and left, shaking my head.
….Yes, I’m that kind of person.
Moving on to my other negative personality traits, I don’t think I could add anything to the “Graffiti” tag.
1. I’m waaaaay too much of a goody-two-shoes. I could get caught!
2. I couldn’t come up with any commentary that was any better. My own level of maturity is at the point where I can tell when comments/actions are immature, but I can’t come up with mature comments/actions of my own. As you might’ve guessed, this is exactly the sort of thing I’d've come up with a few years ago. (Tho’ I’d probably have written something like “This is vandalism” or something even LESS intelligent and to-the-point.)
….THAT was even LONGER.
June 9, 2007 at 8:53 pm
In terms of character count and word count, mgilpin’s is actually longer.
Very nice post, m. Way to make up for being quiet the last few days.
And thank you, Josy, for once again sharing so much of yourself.
June 10, 2007 at 1:30 am
thank you, john… (smile)…
josy, i think you don’t give yourself enough credit…
there is something to be said for choosing this subject… i’m sure within minutes of that spot there is more graffiti… but you didn’t shoot it… you shot this… because this caught your attention… and you could have shot it straight on… that is a more typical approach… and one that would occur to just about anyone… instead you tried something new with it…
i know that isn’t the same as a more regimented, rational approach to a subject… (rational as in ‘how can i shoot this to maximize interest’)… and i understand that you didn’t see this and immediately think, ‘i need to shoot this such that i can up the contrast in gimp and the i really want to explore how much i can push the rule of thirds’… but it isn’t an accident…
an accident would have been trying to snap the image, but getting bumped such that it moved the text from the center to the edge… or if you set the camera on a tripod so you could use the timer and take a self portrait, but forgot the timer was 2 seconds, not 20…
ok… silly examples… but what i’m saying is that you made choices… and maybe you didn’t know what the result of those choices would be necessarily… you didn’t visualize the final image when you were shooting… but your choices were good ones… and this image works… which suggests to me that intuition may have played a part… or that looking at a lot of images recently has given more models/designs/compositions for your unconscious to shuffle through while you think what you could do… in either event, take some credit… it is a good image… and you made it…
so there!… (wink)…
June 10, 2007 at 1:43 am
oh… as for adding text to this… you could just put a piece of paper down… or a sketchbook/diary… and write something like, ‘when i see this now, i think “stupid high school kids trying to be clever”, but a few years ago i could have done this’…
just a thought…
June 10, 2007 at 3:15 am
love this josy. great texture. almost like the fuzz at the end of the night on tv. well, like when i were a lad…
June 10, 2007 at 10:06 am
m- There isn’t really any proper way for me to respond to all that… I could begin a tirade of YES IT WAS AN ACCIDENT… but it seems pointless. So I’ll just say, “Thank you Mike!” and move on.
Pod- But now they just go to infomercials! Probably less meditative, but slightly more interesting for the insomniac.
June 10, 2007 at 6:07 pm
(laugh)… has anyone ever accused of being stubborn?…
don’t answer… that is entirely rhetorical…
April 2, 2010 at 2:22 am
Hello there, Happy Fool’s Day!!
A circus owner walked into a bar to see everyone crowded about a table watching a little show. On the table was an upside down pot and a duck tap dancing on it. The circus owner was so impressed that he offered to buy the duck from its owner. After some wheeling and dealing, they settled for $10,000 for the duck and the pot.
Three days later the circus owner runs back to the bar in anger, “Your duck is a ripoff! I put him on the pot before a whole audience, and he didn’t dance a single step!”
“So?” asked the ducks former owner, “did you remember to light the candle under the pot?”
Happy April Fool’s Day!