Original Photography Post

I thought it would be nice to have an original photography thread with a few guidelines. Keep it clean (or in accordance with the forum's criterion), keep your criticism of others' work objective, and I think it would be interesting to hear about the photos themselves in a brief description of them, what they mean to you, or how they came about. The last bit is optional of course... some photography is best left for the viewer to interpret. Have fun!

Here are some of my own original photographs from my hometown.

My town is a mixture of both heaven and hell. The best of the best, the worst of the worst - you can find it all in Memphis. We live in the heart of the bible belt, the conservative Christian south. Although the people are bent towards morality, this is a society that doesn't mind the subculture of racism. You can find statues of dead Klansmen in our parks, and obviously placed rebel flag stickers on plenty of local vehicles.

And still, I love this place, however ugly and flawed its history may be. Here you have the soulful, rockabilly heart of the midsouth, the birthplace of Elvis, and the self-titled home of the best kind of music there is - the blues. There is nothing more enjoyable than letting the wind from the banks of the mighty Mississippi River carry you into a daze. But what really makes this place so extraordinary to me is the secret little locations that are often overlooked. It is not hard to discover the things about Memphis that keep us here for generations.. This is where my heart and soul will remain long after I am dead and gone.

The Mississippi

South Main

Gates of the Mississippi

One Way

I like "One Way." What would help would be making the One Way sign more obvious by either taking the picture at another time or in another spot.

Here's some of mine.
Church

Little dude's mouth...I wish I could have focused more on the saliva to make it more real, but it was a quick shot.

Hey Mindfield, what do you know about the pyramid?

Given all your points of the obvious, to those who know the area, monuments and nods to the historical and or continued feelings and ideologies of racism, hate, and corruption, the pyramid becomes even more interesting given its own symbology and history.

I certainly wasn't aware of such a pyramid out there.

(***This is obviously and off-topic response to a question that was referring to an in-topic post. Please do not delete.)
Leftwood
The Pyramid arena has been around since 1991.. Its soul purpose was to be a home for our college basketball team, and then home to the Memphis Grizzlies once the NBA decided we were a city of enough importance to have our own team. As far as I know, the Pyramid was built with the greatest possible degree of respect for our city's link to historical Memphis and the pyramids of Egypt. I am not aware of any corruption or lack of compassion that played into the decision of putting a pyramid structure here. The funny thing is, despite the fact that the Pyramid Arena is an architectual masterpiece (the 3rd largest pyramid in the world, AND a completely functional sporting area/concert hall) you're not alone when you say you had no idea it exists. It is unfortunate that we now have the FedExForum to house our basketball teams and the larger concerts... The forum is an eye-sore, and a huge waste of the tax dollar. But what really gets me is what the city plans to do with the Pyramid now.. They sold it to BassProShops and are turning it into some kind of superstore. It was between that and an aquarium, but I guess that killing fish is more fun than looking at them.

I like 'gates of mississippi' and 'one way', mindfields.. The church is very eerie Attolia.

Here is one of mine- "concealment"

I love graffiti on architecture. It mirrors the broader scale of things..

The church picture turned out better than I expected. I was using a low-quality camera and zoomed in to the tower, making the picture look more grainy, but it looks great. The snow on the gargoyle figures adds a nice touch.

Here's the window where I took the church picture from.

This is untitled. There are a ton of fancy homes along the river. I loved the vine-like plants twisting around the fence here. Contrast has been played up a bit.

Mindfields, try focusing on just one vine that is well wrapped on the fence. Do an up-close shot with a good camera.

This is a wire man on a bike. It's hard to take a picture of this without having the other wires distort the image.