Giorgio de Chirico. The painter. I have a book on my desk with several of his paintings. Love his stuff. It gets better and more intriguing the more I get to look at it. And part of the result of that is that I look at street scenes differently. De Chirico isolates elements and if there are a cast of characters in them then they come with their own questions.

So I was looking back at this image from a series I shot in Leicester. The curving eye of the form is now an irritating distraction. That's what the mechanical eye of a lens might want to convince me is what is before me. On the other hand I like the cobbles that I filled in so that the road appears to be a steep fall at the edges. There is also that nice bench partly lit in the foreground. And bricks are always welcome.

Be that as it may. I wanted to rough it up a bit so I took away some of the perspective at left and right. That is what you see directly below.

Though there is a late afternoon vibe to the colouring and all people are kept away it was still not enough. Amazing how just a closed door transforms the meaning of a building by the way. It made a difference from the start having that door closed.

But I went for a more atmospheric attempt at last, as you can see at the bottom of the page here. The cobbles are lost. The sky is more threatening. And the building becomes more introverted as if it wants to keep what happens behind the walls a secret. For example, the white windows to left become more sentinel like.

I must try to do some cityscapes with a de Chirico influence. Have to look around and see what I can come up with.