Breakwater

I have been rereading John Szarkowski’s book, The Photographer’s Eye. My musing, this month is about the Thing Itself. My thing is an old ship that was sunk in front of a pier to create a breakwater. I have photographed it over the years but never felt satisfied with the results.

This photograph is the best I had made until recently.  I shot it with my 8×10 view camera, knowing I was going to have to crop it. I like the pier leading into the boat, like a visual torpedo. However, this is also the problem, as all lines lead to the center of the frame and the sky is blah. I knew there was an image but this wasn’t it. 

This view of the ship was made from a slightly higher perspective on the shoreline with a medium long lens. It compresses the space but does shows what the ship looks like. It is an, I am here and this is what it looks like photograph. You see the pier though not how decrepit it is, and you can see the ship collapsing in on itself. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see the wheelhouse falling entirely into the hull of the vessel.

This image of the bow of the ship does have a sense of motion with the very front of the bow pushing the very edge of the frame. All the leading lines lead the eye to the very tip of the prow in the upper right-hand corner. Moreover, the seaweed on the line lets us know that this ship hasn’t gone anywhere in a long time. 

This image shot from head-on begins to give that feeling that I wanted. The bow is rising from the mud loud and proud. The pier coming in from the left side is an active leading line, but I begin to wonder about the stability of the dock rather than the grandeur of the ship.

By cropping the image I was able to accentuate the bow of the ship rising from the mud and diminish the importance of the pier coming in from the​ left side. I wanted the pier to give some connection to the shore, but I wanted that prow to rise majestically from the mud, to have the dignity I felt it deserved.

tillman