Remember when your were a kid and one of your friends would say, “Let’s Play Pretend!”? And off the two of you would go, creating a world that most likely only the two of you could see or understand whether to play house or Cowboys and Indians..
So, let’s play ‘pretend’! You get to chose the setting for our game. You are a photographer today, I am your companion/assistant/model. However, since I am the one who said, “let’s play pretend”, I am dictating your choice of two settings:
1) It is a lovely crisp fall day, early in the morning. We are in a rural setting, maybe the mountains, with trees, a stream, flowers and maybe even a little mist rising in the cool morning air. The trees are starting to change colors. The wildlife is actively gathering food and stores, preparing for the coming winter. There is a faint whiff of smoke from a wood-burning stove or fireplace on the air. The sun warms your skin even as the cool air causes chill bumps to rise on your arms. You have a good four hours to capture all this with your camera before going home to admire your day’s work in the computer monitor or in print.
2) It is a cool, crisp, sunny fall day in the downtown core of the urban city life. The tall buildings block the sun coming up from the east, but at the intersections of the streets, the warmth of the rising sun presses on your jacket, making you want to strip down to the t-shirt underneath until you go back into the shadows of the tall buildings. As you look around, the graffiti on the street signs, the newspapers & other trash blown helter-skelter into the doorways, the homeless, wrapped in their wool blankets, still sleeping in the nooks and crannies of the street overwhelm the beauty of the landscaping and grassy knolls leading up to the doors of the tall buildings. The urban landscape is not what it used to be. But when you look closer, there is a beauty in the architecture: the way the glass of the windows reflects the sky; the red and gold leaves wafting through the air to land on the damp sidewalk forming a kaleidoscope of color and textures. The smell of pastries and hot mocha coffee from the nearby bakery that makes your mouth water, enticing you to take pictures of the urban environment, to show a different kind of beauty that is uniquely the urban world.
Which would you choose? How would you make the most or the best out of two totally different scenarios? Add your comments below to stake your claim on what feels most authentic to you!