looking at pictures

I like photographs that draw my eye into the frame. I like the illusion of space in ones that use converging lines to give me a pathway into the back of the picture. Just yesterday I saw this dramatic example of the type. It comes from Londonist, a popular blog in the Gothamist Network.

{Caption: Tottenham Court Road Tube by cicliced}

Londonist's current front page has a varient that I like even better — the pathway that curves into the distance.

{Londonist's credit: Photo by matthew black on flickr}

I did some searching on a popular photo site called pixadeus and came up with some further examples. This gallery page of my pixadeus examples on ImageShack contains results from pixadeus searches using the terms lane, street, and village. (At bottom of this post I've put a slide show of these images.)

I'm pretty sure the clichés of converging line photography are receding rails on railways, such as these:

{Pixadeus caption: Trees bent by the weight of ice from a winter storm line railroad tracks in Hinsdale, Mass., by risto}

Clichés though they may be, rails work well in photos. For example back at the beginning of the twentieth century an employee of the Detroit Publishing Co. made these converging rail images of New York subway construction. They're from collections in the Library of Congress Prints and Photos Div. As always, click to view full size.

{Caption: 14th St. subway station, New York, c1904}

{Caption: In the subway, New York, N.Y. c1904}

{Caption: City Hall subway station, New York, between 1900 and 1906}

{Caption: 28th St. subway station, New York, between 1900 and 1906}

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Here is the promised ImageShack slideshow of the images I found on pixadeus.



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For more images of NY subway construction, see "Building New York's Subway" (1903)

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I'm including this last photo from the Detroit Publishing Co. series just because I like it.

{Caption: Concrete stairway under construction, 23rd Street subway station, New York, between 1900 and 1906}