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The above photo shows more of a scuff than a genuine patina, but I like the vaguely landscape-y illusion suggested.
As with the rusted hinges I had photographed earlier, I think that too much graphic detail distracts from the patina (more on that in my penultimate paragraph, below). Left: a stone marker that seems to be a relic from the railroad era, along the defunct tracks at the edge of Cenci Park in Lancaster, OH. Right: a fortuitous combination of corrosion, graffiti, and the interplay of sun and shadow on a railway bridge.
For some reason, I don't find the presence of the bolt to be as distracting as the hinge or the alphanumeric characters -- perhaps because the shape is simple enough to avoid specificity. It doesn't intrude too much with an aggressive statement of its identity and scale.
The presence of two bolts almost suggests a narrative -- although whether one sees confrontation, separation, or tentative approach may be something of a Rorschach test... Still, I find the two shapes to be ambiguous enough to allow the patina to retain its immediacy. And, to me, that's what this "Patina Project" is about: seeing the patinas' colors and textures without (im-) the mediating influence (-mediacy) of quick identification or categorization ("that is a tree; that is a bridge; that is a car") to hedge our gaze. Facile labeling puts us at one remove from the image, as the label interrupts and defines perception.
More:
Stolen Idea I
Stolen Idea II
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