There was a period last summer when I made a series of photographs of construction workers on East College upgrading water service and laying asphalt. Part of the photos' idea was to show why traffic was slow along the well-used corridor.
That part was easy. The difficult part was to make the photos interesting. To give them a timeless quality, highlighting the contrast between the workers and their tasks, and the textures of machinery and asphalt.
My favorite of the series is above where the diagonal lines created by the equipment and the workers' tools lead you through the composition, suggesting both movement and progress.
Using just a small section of the steamroller at the left and a balancing larger section at the right frames the center action where each worker is in movement caught still with a high shutter speed. The photo has great depth with foreground, middle ground, and background objects or activities.
The sense of depth continues in the photo below where each worker’s action mimics the others, similar but just enough difference to define each one’s task.
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