The misdirection is my favorite thing about this shot.

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As a viewer, our eyes naturally seek information in the brighter areas of the photo, but if you pull your focus onto the darks, you force the viewer to look away.

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As a viewer, this effect creates a feeling that we are interrupting a private moment. This feeling is present because the focus throw sparks a sense of voyeurism, a disconnection between the subject and the environment.

An excerpt from Don Delilo's "White Noise" summarizes my feelings about photographing the Exorcist steps.

"Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around. Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site…. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits.

A man in a booth sold postcards and slides—pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. “No one sees the barn,” he said finally. A long silence followed. “Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.” He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others. “We’re not here to capture an image. We’re here to maintain one. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.”

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. “Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.” Another silence ensued. “They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” he said "

It's not everyday you get this sort of view on the beach, eh?

The story here is that I woke up and noticed the way the sunlight was beaming onto my shirt from the night before.

Thought it looked interesting enough to shoot. 

When I first came to DC four years ago I was terribly upset that it was nothing like New York. 

The best part of NY for me is it’s chaos. The inevitable chaos that comes from how many millions of people sycophantly smushed into layers upon layers. 

NY is a photographers playground. Nothing and no one is where they should to be. To say DC is the opposite is an understatement. Here, everything is where it should be, and more so there was a committee of 10 people who threw away an entire summer planning why that thing should be in that spot. 

Here, even the graffiti; murals (semantics) are uniform and intentional. 

I looked it up. This mural of JFK has some meaning tied to the Berlin Wall or some bullshit. 

My point here is that It wasn’t until I realized that the whole of DC is filled to the brim with symbolic motifs (like this one) that I started to appreciate the calculated intentionality of this town. 

A lot of the photos I was messing around with when I edited this coming batch of photos are altered digitally to be wider. This one is no different. The idea here is creating a fake medium format (not intentionally at first, but after a couple of experiments it became intentional) photography style by stretching regular 35mm until right before it looks unnatural. 

I don’t think anyone else is doing this. Not to say I’m doing this for that reason. Just an observation. 

There’s another worldly quality to this photo that I can’t quite put my finger on. It evokes a feeling that I usually attribute to UFO sightings or strange things of that nature. 

The story here is that I had a real craving for pancakes so I stopped at a diner. What caught my eye was this really crazy little juke box. It just looked so quirky. Naturally this is what I photographed. 

I digitally stretched the photo a bit and I think it helps the jukebox stand out just enough for you to say “huh, that looks weird. That doesn’t belong here…”