Lens-Artists Challenge #315: Common Object

Lens-Artists Challenge #315: Common Object

After taking part in the last Lens-Artist Challenge, 'Shorelines', and being made to feel so welcome by the group, I was eagerly waiting for the next subject to be announced. Promptly on Saturday, Ritva posted the Lens-Artists Challenge for the week: 'Common Object'.

Well that gave me pause for thought, what could I possibly do? By the very definition there should be no shortage of subjects, from ornaments or foodstuffs to close-ups of the technology that abounds in most houses.

But I like to get out and about when I'm taking photographs, it's as much about exercise as photography (the five weeks spent laying on the beach that featured in 'Shorelines' being the exception). And then it hit me, I had the perfect subject. 

One thing that struck me early on when we arrived in Portugal some twenty years ago was the proliferation of power and telephone cables. Wherever we went, or whenever I tried to take a photograph, odds are there was a power line crossing the frame. I would move to try and avoid them, but sometimes it just wasn't possible. Eventually I learned to embrace the noble telegraph pole and electricity pylons, and began to incorporate them into my images, even making them the main subject of a photo. Just search for 'Pole-arity' in my posts (that was not a term invented by me, but one I came across in an Emulsive (https://emulsive.org/articles/projects/polarity-a-lockdown-project) blog post during the pandemic).

So here we are, I present you with a series of images of our local telegraph poles and electricity pylons, a Common Object taken with a circuit bent children's camera and holding a reversed Panavision wide-angle converter over the camera lens. The effect produced by holding a reversed lens over the camera has been around for a while and is used a lot in motion picture photography. The 'Deakinizer' was a lens invented by cinematographer Roger Deakins that creates an image with a clear centre and blurred edges. I had heard that a cheap way to make a Deakinizer is to hold a wide-angle converter reversed in front of a camera lens, and I must admit, it works a treat.

Each week a member of the Lens-Artists group is asked to host the Challenge and suggest a theme. This week it was Ritva from 'Ritva Sillanmäki Photography' and the theme is 'Common Object' (https://sillarit.com/2024/09/07/lens-artists-challenge-315-common-object/). Usually themes for the Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here (https://photobyjohnbo.com/about-lens-artists/), and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag 'Lens-Artists'.

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#Pole-arity, #Electric, #Electrical, #Pole, #Pylon, #Telephone, #Polearity, #LensArtists, Lens-Artists, #Challenge,