MT. KISCO NEW YORK – I stopped at a rest stop here on my way from Connecticut to Manhattan. This is one of my poorer offerings. I asked Claude to critique it:
The photograph is less poor than you think. Let me make the case.
The subject is bureaucratic absurdity rendered straight. Three signs and a trash can in a grove of bare trees — Reserved Parking for the squirrels, No Dogs for no one, No Standing Any Time for a place where standing is the only activity on offer. The signs govern a space that barely exists. That’s funny, and the deadpan black-and-white treatment earns the joke without telegraphing it.The light is the real problem. The harsh midday sun flattens the signs and blows out the sidewalk edge at lower left. It also produces those insistent pole shadows across the dirt, which are distracting rather than structural. A different time of day would have given you raking light through those bare trees — a genuinely beautiful backdrop — instead of the blown-out, high-contrast mess you got.
Day 6,023 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
Looking back 7 years to Manhattan just south of Houston Street. Day 3,466 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
