Who sat here?

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." - Diane Arbus.

A chair is just a piece of furniture, right? But what if you spot a chair sitting in an old abandoned storage shed out in the woods? The material has all but rotted away right down to the cushioning which has turned orange from exposure to the elements. Some remnants of the original material remain, but it's so discolored it's hard to tell what the color actually was.

One can't help but wonder what the story is here? Who owned this chair and when was it used? It appears to be a recliner, so it more than likely sat in front of someones TV. Somebody used it, so one has to wonder who and for how long? The questions that come to mind are endless, and all that's really here is a rotting old chair. But what do we see?

Photography should have a story, even if you are forced to wonder what the story actually is. People look at a photograph and see different things, but it should make them think. With portrait photography it's no different but it is more challenging. It's easy to have someone strike a pose, but the challenge is to bring out feeling. That's always been my biggest challenge when photographing people.

But this is just a chair, and I have to say it's a bit of a departure from what I usually do. I have no portrait shoots lined up for a few weeks so I went out looking for things that interested me. I used my 18-55mm lens set at 18mm, 1/40 sec. at f11, ISO 100. I really liked the way this one looked in color so I didn't convert it to b&w.

Here's another...

A kid with a tattoo on his face and another kid behind him counting play-money. I know what was really going on when I took this picture last week, but someone else would have to wonder what the story is. It could be a million different things. This was done with my 50mm lens, 1/60 sec f1.8 ISO 200.