Good images happen when you walk around with your camera. I was walking with friends around downton Seattle and as we wandered past an alley I happened to look up and this is what I saw. I believe, although I am not sure, that it was an urban art installation. They way that the wires crossed back and forth from all different levels, the fact that every piece of laundry was white, it all spoke to and intentional piece of art. I thought it was beautiful and your experience of it changed as you walked underneath and the lines and placement of the pieces changed as my perspective changed. I knew that I wanted a photograph of it but it presented a challenging exposure situation. I was standing in deep shadow with dark shadows falling on parts of both walls and a bright blue sky right behind the main subject. I didn’t want the walls to go black because the sense of context that they give is really important so I took my initial reading using spot metering off of one of the shirts and then underexposed by one stop. I wasn’t concerned about preserving detail in the sky because there was none, but I didn’t want the shirts to blow out the highlights. Luckily the shirts were all in shadow so they weren’t too hot, exposure wise. By going -1 on the exposure the walls were very dark in my original image but there was enough dynamic range in the file to pull the detail out in post processing.
-Russell Berg
www.seeingberg.com
