Interpret, rather than describe, industrial scenes: when photographing buildings or machinery, include other elements in the frame to help tell the story.

Most industrial scenes--pictures of buildings, construction projects, dams, oil fields, factories and supply yards--are photographed as description. Such images may show the subject, but they rarely communicate much beyond surface appearance. To communicate, photographers must do more than describe. They must interpret, using the principles of abstraction and incongruity to convey meaning.

In the first example (top right), I photographed Chinas Three Gorges Dam--the world's biggest dam, five times larger than the Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada border. When completed, the Three Gorges Dam will be more than 7,000 feet long and 600 feet high, will have 26 hydro-turbine power generators and will contain a 400-mile-long reservoir. I based my interpretation on two points: the dam's vast scale and the great energy it produces. I used a 24mm wide-angle lens; without it, the scale of the dam is lost. The curving distortion that the wide-angle lens adds to the perspective emphasizes the sweeping embrace of the huge structure as it arcs across the frame. I devote most of the frame to the energy aspect of my story. The spray in the air glazes my lens and softens the detail just enough to add a touch of abstraction and atmosphere. I pushed the dam, along with the towers and the cranes still being used to build it, up as high as I could in the picture to allow as much room as possible for the roiling waters of the Yangtze River to underscore my point.

My second example (right) was taken in the railroad yard in Barstow, California. The procession of power lines provides a stage, and the setting sun a backdrop, as a freight train rumbles into the picture to become the principal player in this scene. Each item offers a layer of meaning, which, when superimposed, combines subject and context into a coherent presentation. I shot at sunset in order to abstract the scene with backlight, showing less and saying more in the process. The progression of poles and towers echoes the cars that rumble past them, emphasizing the movement that is my message.

I made the third example (above) in California's Mojave Desert. The power shovel resembles a dinosaur adrift on the desert landscape--its mission is to scour the desert. To stress that mission, I focus on the dirt, not the shovel. The late afternoon sun comes in at a low angle, defining texture and the rugged nature of the terrain. Using a low vantage point, I fill almost the entire frame with tread marks leading the eye deep into the image, finally ending at the shovel itself.

Workers were still doing brick work at the massive Three Gorges Dam visitors center on the Yangtze River when I made the final example (above). This fellow seems to be taking a break at the moment. I organized this image around those rhythmic semicircular patterns of bricks, but the man seems to be in no great hurry to get to them. By choosing a high vantage point to shoot down on the job, I am able to tell a construction story in human, rather than mechanical, terms, isolating and emphasizing the man, and relating him to his task. (If we look closer, my high vantage point also reveals that he seems to have left his yellow hard hat at rest in the dirt, and wears a traditional straw hat instead to keep himself cool. In some countries this would be a safety issue, but apparently not on the Yangtze.)

by philip n. douglis, abc

Philip N. Douglis, ABC, directs The Douglis Visual Workshops, now in its 36th year of training communicators in visual literacy. Douglis, an IABC Fellow, is the most widely known consultant on editorial photography for organizations. He offers his comprehensive six-person "Communicating with Pictures" workshops every May and October in Oak Creek Canyon, near Sedona, Arizona. For registration information, call +1 602.493.6709 or e-mail [e-mail]

You can view Douglis' multi-gallery cyberbook on expressive digital travel photography at www.pbase.com/pnd1.