Sioux Lookout

[Christopher Steven b]

Last year I had the pleasure of road-tripping about 24 hours NW (From Ottawa, ON) to Sioux Lookout in northern Ontario. The purpose of the trip was for my girlfriend to gather interviews for what would be her Master's research project in journalism.

In addition to this shot I have a few more in the series here: Sioux Lookout Photos
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[rick_reno]

nice, i like some of the others much more, 1,4,6,7,10,11 and 13 really stand out.

[Christopher Steven b]

Thanks so much, Rick.

[digidiva]

Can I be really honest? I may just be being incredibly dense here, but I have no idea what I'm looking at.
Obviously it's taken in the woods / forest, however the large OOF section across the middle of the image completely kills it for me.
Also...upper right...is that a dog?
I'm sorry if I've caused any offense, but critique from this forum has always been an excellent tool for my photography.

[saea501]

I agree. It's a bit hard to tell what the subject is. I see the dog....but the OOF tree branch (?) in the middle is odd.

[Christopher Steven b]

Hey digidiva--of course you can be honest. I totally appreciate the critique and I take yours as a valid one. Your critique seems to be 1) you don't like the oof area 2) you're not sure what you're looking at, especially 2) not sure what the thing on the upper right is.

The image is probably best seen in a series with context and probably shouldn't be shown outside of that context. For me, though, I like the ambiguity, I like the confusion, the discomfort associated with not knowing what is going on. Also, shooting through a dense forest and wanting to subtly push focus to an obscured subject meant in this case shooting large aperture, which leads to the OOF-ness of the foreground. I pretty much embraced that for more than the technical and pragmatic reasons.

This was a pack dog--a sled dog that I encountered in the far north. He and his pacing pack members who all slept in overturned over-sized recycling bins, were all chained up; but the sounds they made were sufficient deterrent to my getting any closer than this photo depicts.