Book 2 · Full-color field guide, 100 pages
Liminal Spaces Photography
How to Find and Shoot Empty Malls, Hotel Corridors, Pools and Other Uncanny Places
The right place at the right moment matters more than an expensive camera. A mall before the shutters go up. A hotel corridor at night. A still pool, a laundromat at 3 a.m., an empty theater. The pictures the internet calls liminal spaces are taken in ordinary places, and this guide shows you how to find them and photograph them yourself, legally, with the phone in your pocket.
Paperback coming in November.
100 pages, 6 x 9 in, printed in full color. Worked examples, side-by-side edits, exercises and a field checklist.
From the opening
Take a moment with the vending machine. It stands against a dark wall on a street at night. Its shelves are lit, its buttons are ready, and the sidewalk in front of it is empty. Nothing is wrong with the scene. A machine like this is meant to be used by people walking past, and there is nobody walking past. If the picture holds your attention longer than a photo of a vending machine should, you have already noticed the quality this book is about.
What is in the book
From the first visit to the finished picture
- Where and when to go so a place is empty, and what to say when someone asks what you're doing
- Getting people out of the frame: waiting for the gap, long exposures, erasers and stacking
- Composing a picture with no obvious subject: vanishing points, camera height, corners and the far end
- Fluorescent light, mixed light, and the green cast your camera sees that your eyes don't
- Three editing treatments, shown side by side, with the slider names for three common apps
- Place by place: malls and food courts, pools, hotels and motels, 24-hour businesses, stages, arcades and routes
- The rules: venue policy, your rights in public places, privacy, and posting your pictures online
A look inside
Two of the worked examples, printed in full color. The book also has side-by-side editing studies, exercises and a field checklist. No abandoned buildings, no trespassing.
Who is this book for?
Anyone who has saved a picture of an empty mall or a hotel corridor and wondered how to take one like it, and photographers looking for a fresh project close to home. Everything is phone-first: the settings, lenses and apps you already have.
The companion volume, Liminal Spaces, explains why these pictures work. The free guide on this site, how to photograph liminal spaces, is a taste of the book's approach.
Details
Paperback ISBN 978-1-923893-75-7. Ebook ISBN 978-1-923893-76-4. 6 x 9 in, 100 pages, premium color. Author: Aaron Wells.
Paperback coming in November.