[ Lost in the Landscape ]

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.

The 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.

And 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 | Categories: gardening • photography | Tags: composition • shadows • silhouettes | 3 Comments »