The Other Side

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I feel it necessary to use another picture that focuses on abandoned places and things.

Hey, don't close the browser window, I promise this is going to be different than Monday's post.

You see, on my last post, "The Creepy Factor," I delved into photographs that instill and uneasiness or creepiness in the observer. I used the abandoned home in my photograph to show such a feeling. The doll, the baby's rocking-seat, and the state of decay the house was in all added to a fantastically disturbing image, but the idea that all abandoned things are inherently eerie is a bit broad.

I don't think anyone's going to argue that a building that's been abandoned for more than five or ten years is creepy and unnerving. Maybe it's because around ninety-percent of horror movies revolve around creepy, old houses, or maybe it's from a more primitive reason that such places give us the chills. I'm not really sure, myself, but I do know that items that are abandoned in the middle of nowhere tend to be far less scary.

Case and point, this old Ford truck;

As you may remember, I went into detail in "The Creepy Factor" about how the scariest things about a macabre image is that you don't know shit about what the story is behind it.

I don't know about you, but I definitely don't get a creepy feeling looking at this picture, or even when I was right next to this beauty. And I have no idea what its story is. Hell, I don't even know what the model of this truck is. If you're anything like I am, you're not filled with a sense of eeriness and dread, but of curiosity. Where has this vehicle been? Who owned it? Were there a lot of good memories in it?

For that matter, what the hell did this thing look like before rust and time ripped it apart? I'm guessing it had that classic mint-green paint job (classic, but in my opinion, it was an ugly-ass color), but was there a time when this thing was being taken care of like so many vintage-car owners love to do to their 1970s hotrods?

I know today's topic isn't as in-depth as Monday's was, but I thought it was important to clear up that my love of abandoned things comes in two flavors: creepy and curiosity. We'll get into something a bit sunnier on Friday.

I was going to drown this picture in cool effects on Photoshop, as is my usual style, but a combination of a self-imposed deadline and admiration for the truck means you get a picture that's completely untouched. I promise, it's a rare occasion.

The Creepy Vibe

Creepiness is a feeling I love to play with every once in a while with my pictures, for a multitude of reasons. I don't think I'm a creepy person (at least, I hope not, considering I'm trying to have a fairly decent public image), but something about strange and eerie imagery intrigues me on an adventurous level.

I think it does for a lot of people as well. Otherwise horror and dark-fantasy movies wouldn't do nearly as well, and there is a large following for scary or disturbing photographs around the internet.

Personally, the most eye-catching pictures, to me, in this genre are the ones that are subtly creepy, that depict a scene where something odd is happening. It's the strangeness, the unknowing of the whole story behind the image, that makes it scarier.

It works with movies, too. In "A Nightmare on Elm Street," Freddy Krueger is a terrifying boogeyman, haunting the dreams of teenagers and slicing them up for seemingly no reason other than just having a great time with it (I'm sure many can relate, considering one of the kids was Johnny Depp). But the moment you find out who Freddy was-how he was a child-murderer who was himself murdered, and is coming back for revenge-he becomes a bit less frightening. Sure, he's still a major threat and can slice you to ribbons, but knowledge of what he is now gives the main character an edge. Knowledge makes the monsters disappear.

With photographs, that comfort of knowing what the monster is, or what is actually going on, is never going to be given to you. You can only speculate, and let your imagination run wild. And that, boys and girls, is what true fear comes from; imagination of the unknown.

Really? I mean, really?

To me, this is such a picture. I have a habit of peeking into old, abandoned buildings to see what I can find. Sometimes I can get inside with a friend of mine (examples I will show on a later date), but most of the time I can only get a glimpse inside through a window or something. This is one of those moments.

There's an old, rotting house that's been abandoned for years near my girlfriend's place, and I desperately wanted to take pictures of her inside it. Unfortunately, the place was falling apart and boarded up, making me feel a bit uncomfortable bashing my way in with my significant other in naught but a cocktail dress. Luckily, there was a little hole in the boarded-up doorway, and to my surprise, this is what I saw when I peeked in.

I don't know about you, but babies, and baby dolls, creep the absolute shit out of me, and right in what was once a living room were both a doll (which, as you can see, had legs crocked out in unnatural ways) and a damn rocking-crib...thing, both facing not only away from me, but right against the wall. With the light and the shadows in such a perfect place, all it took was a border and a texture overlay to make this one of my creepiest creations to date.

The questions that come with this picture are what really gets me. Why were these toys and cribs left behind all those years ago? Why are they set up like they are? Hell, for that matter, if I turned that baby doll around to face me, how messed up would its face look?

It's these questions, and the fact that they will probably go unanswered, that make this image, and that house in general, very creepy to me. I hope that I displayed that same feeling to you through this photograph.

Otherwise, it kind of failed its purpose.

Edit: Before this gets misconstrued, let me say that when I said babies creep me out, I meant baby imagery, such as abandoned nurseries and the like. Don't worry, if someone brings their newborn around me, my first reaction isn't to scream and run to the nearest corner to wet myself.

Point and Shoot

Hello, and welcome to the beginning of Track In Focus!

...Okay, I pretty much suck at introduction posts with things like these, so let's just skip right to the basics.

My name is Bryce Grumley (my alias is Track Anarchy, but no one ever calls me Track. Long story). I'm a photographer with a fascination for the strange and unique, which is something I've been trying to portray in my photos for the past year. I've tried to hone many different artistic talents over the years, but I feel most at home, by far, behind a camera, whether it be digital or video. I'm even trying to write and direct my own film!

But I digress. If you wanted to know all the little details about me, you could easily click on my profile and read everything you'd ever want to know. No, you'd rather hear (and I'd rather talk) about this blog, and what the point is. Is it just going to be some hipster photographer going on about how and why he took some lame-ass picture of a lawn chair or something?

Pretty much. But I'm going to do it with style.

First things first, I'm not going to go on and on and on about the equipment I use. Partially because I'm using an outdated digital camera most of the time with no attachable lenses (I'm pretty much poor at the time of writing this), but also because I've come to learn, by comparing my work to others' with much, MUCH better equipment, that while a wide-angle lens would be a fantastic to have and make things a bit easier on me in some situations, it's not something a photographer should define his or herself by.

Put in a more blunt way; the way I see it, if you spend most of your time bragging about how much money you spent on high-grade equipment, you're in the wrong field.

Those are the hipsters of the scene.

Anyways, the point of this blog is to go into detail of the back-story of whatever pictures I feel are worth sharing, behind why I did what I did to it, why I thought it was an interesting picture in the first place, and so on and so forth. I'm hoping that by doing this, not only can I get critique and comments from you, the reader, but over time people can come to understand my style, and through that, come to understand who I am.

Who knows, maybe I'll come to understand myself better as well.