hardscape # 201 ~ the reality of the American Dream
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 12:24PM 
Late Sunday AM, Jake's Wine & Liquor - Binghamton, NY • click to embiggenDuring our recent trip to Binghamton in NYS's the Southern Tier (right on the border with Pennsylvania) I spent a little time picturing a few urban hardscapes. If I had the time, I could have easily spent a day or two indulging in that activity.
Binghamton, like many other American cities its size - approximately 45,000 (down from 85,000 in 1950), is a very tattered and decaying semblance of its former self. The opportunities to picture things as they once were are everywhere apparent. All of which got me to thinking - and quite angry - about how, over the last 4-5 decades, Corporate America has basically destroyed small-to-mid-sized American cities.
Their basic business model - acquire, merge, consolidate (growing bigger to serve you better) in the name of "efficiency" - is now at the point where we have quite a few businesses that are "too big to fail" and, as an added benefit, are big enough to destroy big American cities. Anyone been to Detroit lately?
This is just one more example of "silo thinking" in the hollowed halls of academia. It is quite apparent that none of the economic business models coming out of those institutions have ever included any notion whatsoever regarding the effects of those ideas upon the health and vitality of communities. The bottom line of virtually all economic has been focused exclusively upon the health and vitality of corporations at any cost.
Hell, even our former Chief of State, Bill Clinton, told the American people that they, as individuals, had better be "prepared" to have quite a number of different jobs in their lifetime - in effect be prepared to be wage gypsies who move around following wherever/whatever the dictates of their Corporate Overlords.
Because, "What's good for General Motors is good for America."
Say what? No ... wait. In fact, nevermind - there's a bit of "wisdom" that needs more than a bit of re-thinking.
All of that said, this is a photo blog, so, on a picturing note - I prefer my hardscapes - because they are certainly not landscapes - pictures to have the look of a view camera created picture. That is to say, to appear as though they were made with tilt-and-shift perspective controls, AKA - the scheimpflug principal, - vertical lines that are parallel in the real world appear that way in the picture world.
Since Olympus does not offer a tilt/shift lens, I do my scheimpfluggery post-picturing in Photoshop. To date, I have found absolutely no downside to this approach.
Has anyone out there ever noticed this about those of my pictures formerly known as urban ku (now hardscapes)? Do any of you use this technique?
PS - Jake's Wine and Liquor, which was located near our hotel, had a selection that was definitely aimed at the reality of the local economy - The median income for a household in the city was $25,665, and the median income for a family was $36,137. Males had a median income of $28,774 versus $23,014 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,067. About 16.5% of families and 23.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 28.4% of those under age 18 and 10.3% of those age 65 or over.
Reader Comments (6)
So I wouldn't have any problem finding a bottle of Ten High?
Like the hardscape idea btw.
Software scheimpfluggery is a magical thing. I use it lots.
Ditto
Yes, I do this quite a bit, both on the computer for my scanned colour negs, and by tilting the enlarger easel or head when printing monochrome traditionally.
The latter technique can only be done in moderation; too much tilting can make it hard to get the whole neg in focus across the print. Presumably, if I overdid it with scanned colour negs, I could get some visible distortion of the grain structure, but I've never actually seen this happen.
Nice photos, but I'm afraid you're a little confused about the Scheimpflug Principle.
It's not about using a tilt-shift lens or bellows to correctr perspective distortion; it's about using them to achieve total depth-of-field by merging the planes of subject, lens, and film/sensor at a common point called the Scheimpflug Intersection.
You can simulate this in software by taking several shots at different focal distances and merging them in Photoshop, but that's not what you've described here.
For more information on Theodore Scheimpflug's work, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle