I found this image in Great Barrington, New York. It's hardly a remarkable image. But I'm taken by it and have been working to uncover what's really there.
I always start by adjusting the levels to set proper highlights and shadows. I then remove any color tints in the shadows. Next, I usually work with the hue and saturation to affect the contrast before actually adding a curves adjustment layer and adjusting the contrast directly.
This process yields a 'corrected' image, but in this case still a very boring one.
To make this image more interesting, I used a mask to separate the sign and building from the sky and adjusted each individually. The result was a more dramatic image, but one that is still bland and that says absolutely nothing.
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I'm not sure why I'm so taken by this image. Its Americana overtones hearken back to an America that predated me, of which I have neither memories nor affection. Why then bother to look for meaning in this image at all?
But as I write this I come to realize that I don't care about Americana so much as I care about quintessence.
This image would be meaningless - absurd - if found anywhere other than on the main street of an out-of-the-way American town. In Times Square, this would be the facade of yet another themed chain restaurant. In Europe, this would be Disney World. In both cases, the image would be mere Americana and nothing more.
But in Great Barrington, this found image is more than just a diner, and much, much more than Americana: it's quintessential America.
I don't know if that's what I captured in this latest iteration, or if I captured anything at all for that matter. But at least now I know what I'm looking for.
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