Glass Must Be Full
"Glass must be full." I don't know what that is supposed to mean in the context of a gas pump, but taken--probably completely incorrectly--as an optimistic directive it's kind of nice. Especially considering the grayness and cold temperature of the day.
But this is an accidental interpretation, one that I didn't notice until I came back to the image several days later, and that I'm now forcing onto it. Really, I just liked the texture of the paint on the gas pump and hoped I could find an interesting angle. I wonder how often the meaning we find in art is like that--accidental, forced. Often? If so, what does that mean?
OK, now I'm really wandering. I'll stop.
Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/8, shutter 1/30, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: curve for highlight recovery and contrast.
Thoughts for improvement: Couple of things here. First, the sky is very uninteresting. This is in part because by metering for the pump, the sky was overexposed, and although I was able to bring it back down because I shot in RAW format, it's still very flat. It's also in part because it was a cold, gray day, and the sky was actually boring. The other thing is that this would probably have been better with a wide-angle lens--18 mm or shorter, most likely.
JT:
I really like the textures in this one, Mike. Well composed, too.