Doctor Underscore Cloin: Dilapidation

The Dovecote at Uxmal in the Yucatan Peninsula

Another view of Uxmal

This is another posting about photography and what I like to photograph. I shoot a lot of different subject matter. If it looks interesting somehow and I have my camera I’ll photograph it: fungus and pipes, cogs and logs, colors and textures. Not so many people though (although I was conned into shooting a wedding this June). I’m not the only person who likes to shoot this kind of thing. Right Sid?

This posting is also an excuse to hang up a few images in my digital room.

The Amphitheater at the Guild Inn

Recently, in the past few years that is, I’ve started to look at things in a different way. I might shoot something now just for the color(s) that I see, or for the texture(s), maybe a pattern. I find that it’s interesting then to see how what I saw is transformed into pixels, the new technology. Sometimes that’s where frustration sets in, because of the difficulty of translating what is seen, separated from the real world context, into an image that then can be shown.

Still, as one photographer said, they photograph in order to see what the world looks like photographed.

Abandoned house, Curve Lake, ON

Handyman opportunity, found on a back road

Here’s an example: I spent some time trying to photograph the ripples in a streamlet that ran parallel and fairly close to Lake Ontario because of the patterns they created, shadows of the ripples in this streamlet over the sand and pebbles. I’m thinking ‘moiré’ patterns here, sort of interference patterns. I took quite a number of different photographs from a number of different angles. I thought it was very interesting and quite beautiful. Now, here is where the frustration came in, I still haven’t been successful at getting those images to view right, and I’m still working on that one.

Infrared shot of tires and barn wall

So, subject matter varies… greatly.

That being said I still like to photograph what might be encapsulated by the term ‘dilapidation’, the title of this post. What the word means, if you’re not familiar with it, is things falling apart from lack of care. I think my online dictionary says something about disrepair or ruin.

Hey, that sounds like me. I’m fascinated by those places and things which have been built, lived in and/or used by people but that are now abandoned, discarded, rusted, burnt, buried, sunken, collapsed, shunned, and weathered. I also like to see how the environment reclaims the abandoned and the decaying.

Barbecued Doors

Same farmhouse, stairway to second floor

I love to explore old abandoned barns and farmhouses. Well, I’ll explore any house or building falling into decay really, but the country versions just seem to hang around longer and are usually not quite so chained or gated off from the public.

Muskoka farmhouse

Roof needs a bit of work

I like to photograph abandoned cars and trucks in fields, for much the same reason that I like the farmhouses in these sites/environments. I think that the location helps to isolate the subject.

And some things are photographed just because they tweak my sense of humour.