I carried out this assignment on the main street of my small town in central Wisconsin. I don’t usually hang out here, and I found it very interesting in terms of photography. I appreciated Eggleston’s approach to of taking a single photo of each subject, and I mostly held to that principle for this assignment, and I had few subjects with more than one photo.

All photos taken with a 35 mm lens and using manual adjustments. Marshfield, Wisconsin, November 9, 2024. Minimal post processing and no cropping.

The photos are so big, even after reducing their size, that organizing them on this page was difficult. So they are not all ordered by left, right, down, and I apologize. I am working on the problem of file size and my ancient Mac that is ready for the Smithsonian.

ISO 400 f 6.8 1/60
This cherub’s expression is priceless. I like the composition, I don’t know that squaring with the framing structures would make it better.

ISO 800 f 11 1/90
The cyclist was serendipity. The reflections in the window add context about the environment.

ISO 800 f 4.8 1/180
This captures the feel of the entire town.

ISO 800 F4 1/360
BONUS photo: The paper behind the glass works as a canvas for the reflections.

ISO 400 f 13 1/90
There is so much going on here, from autumn leaves to theater traffic and a memorial to a fallen soldier.

ISO 400 f 6.8 1/250
Downtown apartment above an empty storefront.

ISO 800 4.8 1/180
BONUS photo : The reflection of my dog works in this photo.

ISO 400 f 6.8 1/60
I don’t think I nailed the focus on this one, but the composition is e with leading lines and framing from the posts near and far.

ISO 800 f 13 1/360
I stepped into the alley to take this photo. I’m experimenting with aperture and depth of field and wanted a deep DOF in focus.

ISO 800 f 13 1/125
He’s thinking about it !

ISO 800 I 4.8 1/60
The colors are lovely.

ISO 800 f 4.8 1/60
I love that the color of the rust on the vehicle also seen in the gravel and relfected in the front bumper. I now see my legs in reflection, too. .

Reflections : The area I chose for this assignment was visually interesting and had a few people around to add dynamism. I was more occupied with using the range finder and figuring out the exposure than composition, and sometimes I just kind of forgot to give more consideration to the composition when experimenting with f stop and so on. That said, I really enjoyed the assignment and I can tell that I am learning in quantum leaps about exposure and my camera’s particulars. Reflecting on the photos included here and those not included, they capture nicely the feel of the town, from the used tire snow people to small theaters and local shops as well as the Dominos pizza that every small town seems to have.

I would compose some of the scenes differently. The car wash is very interesting and seems to be from the 1960s, and I wanted to capture the whole context including the orange pilon and the One Way sign. But I think the photo would be improved by taking a closer shot and maybe losing one or the other of those. A car heading into the wash would be fabulous !

Some of the compositions are similar, such as the storefronts taken head on, and I would experiment with varying the perspectives. The sidewalk photo inspired me to pay more attention to sidewalks. The colors here are surprisingly rich. I would like to capture this with a cigarette butt or detritus that tells a story about who was there.

The exposure came out quite well in most photos, and I did not need to correct them much, and I am happy about being able to achieve this in manual mode. Focus is mostly good, and Ii am still getting the hang of it. I’ll add that the photos are so enormous (60+ MB) that my current computer cannot handle them well, and I ended up cycling them through the Photos app to process. Lightroom oddly would not read my SD drive but my older Mac could read them with the Photos app. 🤷‍♀️

Eggleston

Discovering Light

Composition