Ever since the beginning of the pandemic when I started working from home, I haven’t taken as many photos as I was pre-pandemic. Commuting to and from work each day prior to the pandemic gave me many opportunities to see lots of interesting things and sights to photograph. Staying at home doesn’t provide quite as many opportunities.
In November of 2022, I decided that I would start walking each morning for at least 30 minutes. I figured it would be good for me to get out and get some exercise. I wake up fairly early, so my walks typically happen while it is still very dark; too dark to take photos without the use of a tripod. Stopping to take out my tripod and setting it up would cut into my walking time, so I avoided doing that. In the last several weeks, it has been getting lighter earlier, but still a little too dark to take photos without a tripod; unless…
Unless you’re wanting to take a photo with a lot of shadow and just a hint of light.
As some of you may know, one of my favorite photography subjects is a fire hydrant. As the light arrived earlier and earlier during my morning walks, I started to notice that the fire hydrants were being lit just enough by streetlamps with just enough ambient light, to make it possible to get some potentially interesting photographs.
So I gave it a try. No tripod needed.
This is one of the first photos I took of an early morning fire hydrant:
After taking that one, I kept looking for other fire hydrants that had a bit more light on one side and a bit darker on the other.
I then took those and converted them to Black and White to make them a bit more dramatic:
And then after playing around with the Black and White versions, I started thinking of the album cover of The Beatles album, “With The Beatles”. So I started goofing around with recreating that album cover:
Maybe one of these days, I’ll take pictures of four different fire hydrants that have similar lighting to use in the “With The Hydrants” collage instead of just copying a single photo multiple times.
