Mysterioso

Don't know how common they are, but every once in a while I'll drive past a place on the side of some local highway in the middle of nowhere that sells cast cement statues. Do folks actually part with their hard earned cash to acquire fake classical sculpture for their yards? Or do you pick one up for your favorite uncle's burial plot? That's just Nutty as Thelonious Monk might say.  

Carpe diem

You just never know what you are going to discover when you go out photographing. We were in a pretty remote location, meandering along a country road toward our destination for the day, when we came across a large industrial complex of butler buildings and what appear to be huge piles of railroad ties. The towers made from these utilitarian pieces of wood are quite amazing, a kind of sculpture in the landscape in the middle of nowhere in particular. We spent about ten minutes or so photographing these objects, which were as mysterious to me in some ways as the statues on Easter Island.

The importance of a little mystery

This is another image made in Bologna. Here, I responded to the mix of warm candle light and the cooler ambient lighting of the church, as well as the iconography, in particular, the contrast between the old and the new. The scene is somewhat mysterious, at least to me, which I like in a photograph. I sat on this photo for a long time because there was a distracting reflection of the candles in the glass that kind of ruined the impact of the image. Finally, I did the required work in Photoshop, as this really isn't intended to be a purely documentary photograph. I'm much happier with the result.