Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Stratford Answerbook



Every so often, I'll take on photography assignments at the day job. The pay isn't great, so over the past few years, I've only agreed to shoot things that are of particular interest to me. Each of the 16 newspapers puts out a supplement once a year called an Answerbook. It lists facts about the town: demographics, history, government information, points of interest, etc, in question and answer form. It's one of the hardest things to shoot because you have to try to find something that is distinctive about that town. Landmarks tend to work best, but those pictures can be very boring.

As you can see, it was an overcast and dreary when I took the picture. There's not a whole lot to work with: dead grass, no leaves on the trees and the left foot of the sculpture is being held up by blocks of wood. I didn't even have a nice blue sky; it started snowing about a half hour after I took the picture. This is where creative cropping comes into play. I zoomed in to get rid of the bleak background and angled myself to be able to get the crest of the building in the background.  Below is the final result:



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