Waiting for a trailer

This past weekend, I went for a stroll with a new friend of mine who's also something of a photographer. We set out to find some urban wasteland to photograph, and settled on Harbor Island, a man-made shipping and industrial island just south-west of the urban core. This turned out to offer just the sort of bleak, industrial landscape we were looking for.

Here's a truck cab that was parked on the street, presumably waiting for a fresh trailer. What caught my eye was the evidently-freshly-squirted violet goo on the cab's hitch. I assume this is some kind of industrial lubricant that gets reapplied between trailer hookups.

I'm starting to think that I'm unhealthily obsessed with contrast. This image didn't look right to me until I had brought out the stark shapes in the back of the truck cab by significantly boosting contrast in controlled areas of the image. I suppose if I were the optimistic sort I would say that this is one distinct "look" that I've been developing: for images that are primarily about shape, I tend to find this high-contrast, desaturated-color look to be effective. If I were a pessimist I would say that my brain is stuck on a high-speed black-and-white film interpretation of the world.