shadows and silhouettes

Here are a few pic­tures from yes­ter­day that felt like they belonged together. They’re made using dif­fer­ent tech­niques, but in the end they’re all about empha­siz­ing lines in a photograph.

The first are pho­tos of shad­ows of crape myr­tles, cast around noon onto a closely cropped lawn.

shadsilshad1

shadsilshad2

shadsilshad3

shadsilsil1The next is of branches against a white wall, shot with a wide lens aper­ture to limit the amount of the image that is in focus.

shadsilstemsAnd the last of dark branches in shade in front of light-colored ones in sun­light. I was using the dark branches to cre­ate lines that break the pic­ture into lit­tle pieces, like the dark seams that you find on stained glass.

Pho­tographs can be about show­ing you what some­thing looks like. It’s some­thing pho­tog­ra­phy can do bet­ter than images made with any other art.

But pho­tographs can also be about mak­ing an image that’s inter­est­ing to look at, even if you might have a hard time fig­ur­ing out what the thing in the photo is. Some­times the pho­tographs turn into fas­ci­nat­ing puz­zles. (Harry Calla­han and Fred­er­ick Som­mer did this brilliantly.)

I make no claims that the pho­tos rise to that chal­lenge, but that’s what I was think­ing of when I took them.

December 27 2008 12:09 pm | Categories: gardening • photography | Tags: • •

3 Responses to “shadows and silhouettes”

  1. Philip on 27 Dec 2008 at 5:19 pm #

    I think these pho­tos are Intrigu­ing and beau­ti­ful. I enjoyed your thought on pho­tog­ra­phy. Very inspir­ing.
    Best,
    Philip

  2. tina on 28 Dec 2008 at 5:29 pm #

    I can see the stained glass effect in the last pic­ture. Even it could be bro­ken up into a puz­zle or mosaic very easily.

  3. lostlandscape on 28 Dec 2008 at 8:18 pm #

    Tina and Philip–Thanks for your com­ments! I think that there are so many things a pho­to­graph can do. Why stop at describ­ing some­thing clearly?

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