Gantry State Plaza, Krishan Sharma

Original:

Replicated:

This is a photograph from Len Jenshel’s Gantry Plaza State Park collection, which can be seen on display at the Museum of the City of New York. This photograph is interesting due to Jenshel’s use of focal points. In essence, a focal point would be described as what the photographer essentially wants the viewer to concentrate on when he/she views the particular photo. The obvious focal point in this photograph would be the large steel support rod, which is bolted to the ground. What makes this interesting is how this focal point is achieved. Rather than focusing on the given target, causing the surroundings to blur, Jenshel only employs centering when establishing the support rod as a focal point; this implies that he also wants to draw the viewer’s attention to the surroundings, which in this case, would be the city skyline. This photograph would thus most likely represent the strong foundation of New York City as a whole. This is due to the strong focus on the support rod, which is attached to platform which appears to be directly below the city from the photographer’s perspective, making it seem as though the support rod is “holding up” the city. It should also be noted that this photograph was taken only a few months after September 11^th, 2001, a horrible event which truly brought New Yorkers together, demonstrating the strength of the foundations of the city in terms of its people.

In comparison to Jenshel’s photograph, my photograph has a vanishing point which is roughly the same, which would be near the actual horizon at the city skyline. In both the photographs, an interesting note would be directed towards the parallel wooden boards that compose the floor. From a painter’s perspective, even though these boards are parallel, they are not perpendicular to the actual plane of view, meaning they must converge at a point which is on the horizon line. If you were to elongate these lines in the photograph, you would notice that they converge at a point on the horizon line outside of the photograph.

The obvious difference between both photographs would be the lighting. Even though the skyline is only experiencing a sunset, the luminosity of Jenshel’s photograph far surpasses that of mine, with both the skyline and steel support rod seeming to radiate more. Jenshel’s camera most likely had a different setting in terms of white balance in order to account for this. Also, the steel support rod in Jenshel’s picture is much more aligned and straight, whereas the support rod in mine is slightly bent, most likely due to an unsteady hand. It should also be noted that more light bulbs were lit on the house-like structure in Jenshel’s photograph than on my photograph.

Another note that can also be made is the reflection of the skyline upon the river. After seeing that I was unable to achieve this effect, I thought perhaps that it was still too bright outside in order to visibly see the reflection. After waiting an hour and taking another photograph, it can be seen that the darkness of the sky still did not achieve this reflection:

Thus, Jenshel’s camera could have been at a critical angle, such that this angle allowed the light rays to “bounce off” the water and be seen. But because my photograph is almost at the same angle, this is most likely not the case. Jenshel’s camera must have been set to a high ISO speed, allowing the camera to have a dramatically increased gain of light from any source. This would allow the camera to detect the weak source of light emitted from the river of the city skyline which would not normally be seen. This setting would also account for the light variability discussed earlier. ISO speed adjustment, however, is unfortunately not a picture setting for my camera. Although Jenshel’s photograph may seem simplistic, it employs numerous photographic techniques and is astounding to observe.