Monday, July 02, 2007

If On a Winter's Night a Traveller


Just experimentin' with the no-flash thingy. Click on the picture to see what I could see, in my little old suburban street that is so ordinary and unthreatening by day. (UPDATE: there is no secret to be revealed in this picture. It just looks better bigger. The fact that I think this streetscape looks sinister may say more about me than it does about the street.)

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pavlov,
Try taking the shot again when there is no car headlight around so that the software in your camera can see the "dark"(gamma) bits.I've looked at it expecting to find something sinister but I cannot see a thing no matter how much I adjust the gamma control.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Gamma control? Um, okay ...

See, it's the car headlights themselves that look sinister to me (I suppose that depends on one's innate capacity for paranoia), but it was just atmospherically sinister out there rather than, you know, the Hound of the Baskervilles or anything. I like the different points and colours and shapes of light, and the way ordinary objects are outlined in silver and grey.

Ampersand Duck said...

Thought there might be a Grim!

Rereading all the Potters in antici.....



....pation.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

So would I be, if I didn't have the review-four-novels-a-week thingy and if somebody hadn't pinched my copy of HP and the Order of the Phoenix.

I've realised belatedly that the text in that post looks as if I'm saying there's some big mystery in the photo when all I really meant is that it looks better bigger. You'd think someone who does it for a living would have learned to write clearly by now, wouldn't you.

Ampersand Duck said...

Well, maybe, but you do far better than a lot of people who call themselves professional writers!

Anonymous said...

Pav, I was thinking in terms of a Sydney streetscape after dark with still a bit of moonlight about.You might see anything stomping around in the semi darkness - possums,funnel webs,even rats.Your camera is a little impressionist electronic picture maker and has the capacity to enhance the contrast for shadowy portions of the picture but this facility may be overridden by the designers' trying to make picture taking idiotproof.Taking such a shot as yours would have been difficult with film and changing the gamma tedious.I can now see that the captured approaching headlights could bring with them a bit of tension in an environment where there were few cars about.

Mindy said...

I too share your paranoia. A familiar place in darkness is often scary because you know the hiding places, but you don't know what might be in them, although your imagination has a pretty good go. Even the light, usually a source of comfort, looks forboding in the picture.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the local film Noise, which I saw yesterday. Although it's set mainly in Sunshine, a flat, sun-baked western suburb, most of the action takes place either at night or in the protagonist's creepily dark rented house.

About that house interior, the set designers should be arrested and charged with wilful crimes against interior decoration.

Well worth a look if you're in the mood for creepy.


CIB

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Thanks, CIB, I love watching movies set in places I know -- never lived in Sunshine, but used to drive through it an awful lot on my way back & forth between Adders & Melb. Most of Look Both Ways was shot within walking distance of my house here, which made watching it a very complicated experience.

Dany, thanks for giving me a nudge about being more experimental and curious. I've been playing around with that shot in iPhoto and now have a much better version of it.

Anonymous said...

Where is Sunshine?

Is it near Geranium?

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Heh!

Or Rainbow, maybe. Or possibly the Moonlight Tank.

Anonymous said...

Near Footscray!

PC, the OTHER half of Look both ways was shot just around the corner near our place!

(Also near Footscray!)

In the olden days when I lived in Adelaide and we drove to melbourne, we'd hold our noses and go Ewwwwwww at the abbatoir stinks of the place. Then I go and buy a house there. Life, how ironic it is.

CIB balcony

lucy tartan said...

Hey CIB, I thought the decor in the house in Noise was pretty cool. The occupants had fallen behind with the Emu Parade duties, that's all.

Matthew da Silva said...

Great shot.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Thank you!