The Observer Effect

The Mission District early evening a few days ago, on my way to an event at Gray Area with a friend, due to meet up with other friends. It’s great when a photograph captures precisely what you see, and then later when you look at the image (no subsequent processing on this), your decision to have snapped the shutter at that moment is confirmed by elements, symmetries, and contrasts of which you weren’t even conscious when you did so. I was careful to get the vertical edge of the wall just right, but I didn’t fully grasp that the two horizontal segments of the photo were close to the golden ratio, or the presence of the person, or the way the two green traffic lights balanced each other, and sort of align with the two damaged stickers, or the narrow bit of space between the speed limit sign and the wall, or the way the brown paint on the top of the wall ends just short of the right side of the framing. And of course whenever I take a photo like this one, I learn about field recordings…