03.02.25: Angles and tones

‍I enjoy photographing city scenes. The colors, the textures and the architecture provide plenty of opportunities for interesting photographs.

‍In the pre-digital age of photography I would often shoot city scenes in black and white. The reason was more financial than artistic: black and white film was less expensive to purchase and to process than color. That made the decision an easy one.

‍Today, with digital, everything defaults to color. There’s no cost benefit to black and white. But when I’m shooting in a city I’m always looking for scenes with strong lines and angles, the type of scenes that will work best in black and white. It’s an artistic decision.

‍This is one of those scenes.

‍Excalibur, a steel sculpture by artist Beverly Stoll Pepper, stands in a common area outside the entrance to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in San Diego. The sculpture consists of three triangular forms reaching across the ground and toward the sky between buildings.

‍When I first saw the sculpture and its relationship to the federal building and other neighboring buildings I knew that the angles and lines would create an interesting black and white composition. After getting a number of shots using the colors in the scene — the reddish-brown of the federal building exterior and the blue San Diego sky reflecting in the glass surfaces of other neighboring buildings surrounding the black of the sculpture — I started looking for compositions that used the strong lines of the scene. I settled on this view that had the sculpture against a cloudless sky, framed by the courthouse exterior in the background and an elevated walkway at top right.

‍I liked how the scene included a number of sharp points — the angles on the sculpture, the corners of walls and windows on the federal building, the walkway filling the top corner — and knew that I had the elements for an interesting black-and-white composition.

‍I enjoyed doing photography during our visit to San Diego, but the trip was far from enjoyable.

‍For years, San Diego was one of my favorite cities to visit on business trips. It was clean and walkable. But I was surprised how much the city had changed in the six years between my previous visit and this trip in 2018. It still had the nice weather, but much of the “clean and walkable” description no longer applied.

‍First, the city had been invaded by rental electric scooters from a variety of companies. People could download an app, find a scooter location and rent it on the spot and pay for the amount of time used. That sounds great … until you consider where the scooters are left when the rider is finished. The sidewalks are filled with scooters that had been discarded. When we weren’t dodging people riding scooters we were stepping over discarded scooters. It made walking from point to point difficult.

‍Second, the homeless problem in San Diego has exploded like it has in many other California cities. We saw people sleeping on sidewalks or in temporary cardboard structures leaning against buildings throughout the downtown area and along the bay.

‍An example: We had a dinner reservation at a nice restaurant, but when we arrived there was a man asleep in a ragged sleeping bag on the sidewalk outside the restaurant entrance. The only way to reach the entrance was to step over him.

‍I asked the restaurant manager if he had contacted city authorities to have the man moved. His facial expression showed frustration, then he told me the story. Every day for a couple of weeks the man would arrive right before dinner time and take his place on the sidewalk, then fall asleep. The manager had contacted the police as well as city officials and had been told there was nothing they could do because the man was within his rights to sleep on the sidewalk in that spot. It was public property.

‍The manager said he was running a small business with about 30 employees on his payroll, paying city and state taxes (which are high in California), but had to watch as potential customers bypassed the entrance to his restaurant because a homeless person was sleeping on the sidewalk and blocking access to his business.

‍He shook his head and said, “You know, it’s really frustrating that his rights seem to outweigh my rights as a tax-paying business owner, but that’s the position the city has taken.”

‍I’m not a public policy expert, but it seems taking the “he has a right to sleep there” position does nothing to address the plight of the homeless.

‍Then there was our hotel, a nice Marriott property, that was selected as a target for a work stoppage by the national hotel workers union. Picketers stood outside the entrance day and night, blocking access and chanting. San Diego police were there to be sure nothing escalated but because the sidewalk was public property the picketers were within their rights to stand right outside the door and hassle hotel guests.

‍San Diego used to be one of my favorite cities to visit, but after the 2018 visit I’m in no hurry to return.

Excalibur, a steel sculpture by Beverly Stoll Pepper, stands outside the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in San Diego.