This photo was taken while standing at the base of a birch tree on campus, leaning against the trunk and looking straight up at the branches. There's not a frame, per se, but this was intentional--I wanted to emphasize the wildness of the tree branches, going out of the frame in all directions. The nature of the birch tree, with its already natural variations of light and dark within the bark itself, lent itself well to an image emphasizing contrast, both in texture and in shade. Smooth, papery bark juxtaposed with the nearly black, knobby protrusions created a surprisingly dynamic picture for being such a static object. In camera raw, I was able to up the contrast even more, drawing attention to the lines and patterns created by the branches. The photo was taken on a very bright winter day, and perhaps the added intensity of the light, reflected on the bark, helped to further brighten the lighter areas of the image. I left the blacks of the image fairly intense as well, instead of balancing the tones evenly, but this only worked to further emphasize the contrast.
The main concept of this image was, quite simply, to find pattern and contrast in my observed environment. The birch tree has a wildness about it, due to the directional quality of its branches, combined with its already stunning natural variation in lights and darks. The unusual angle the image was taken at further adds to the disorienting nature of the photo, as something recognizable, yet somehow foreign at this new perspective. By emphasizing the contrast, the tree is abstracted into lines and shapes, rather than being viewed as simply a tree.
To make this photo, I spent the good part of a very cold winter day wandering about the campus, observing my surroundings. I came upon the birch tree by accident actually, since I wasn't intending to go that direction, but the friend I had been walking with wanted me to walk her back to her dorm. Right outside her dorm, this birch tree stood in the middle of what looked like a small garden, and, climbing over the short barrier and tromping through what must have been decorative groundcover in the summer, made my way over to the tree. To avoid destroying the garden anymore than I already had, I was forced to get as close to the tree as possible, and the only option to take a photo at that point was to look straight up. The view turned out to be much more interesting than I had expected. I tried taking the photo with both a large and small aperture, making the bark closest to me clearest with a blurrier background, and then bringing the whole tree into focus. Somewhere between these two extremes, I found the best shot, that allowed for the most intricate detail to come through.
I suppose that my intention was to draw attention to the incredibly detailed directional patterns that can be found in nature. I wanted to take a good, natural photo whose focus would be on my subject (the tree), without any distractions in the background. A vignette of sorts. I was hoping that the image would come out somewhat abstract as well, since the pattern of the branches themselves, besides the patterns of the bark, were so interesting. I was also so frustrated about my lack of success with shutter speed and my elementary skills with the camera that I was hoping for at least one successful image after an afternoon of wandering around with frozen fingers. I saw the birch tree from afar and got so excited by it that I made a straight line to it, my friend exasperatedly trudging after me.
I don't know many photographers yet (if anyone has a good suggestion for some sort of encyclopedic book on photographers and their works, that's easy to use, please suggest away!), but there are some comparisons to Imogen Cunningham's work on botanical specimens, in that I've emphasized the patterns and shapes found in nature, and the photo has an analytical quality and realism in its heightening of the detailed surface of the tree. My photo may come across as being more abstract, given its larger depth of field, and I also do nothing to control the lighting. My work embraces realism, but shows that realism is perhaps dependent on perspective. Even a highly detailed image can come across as something different, and details themselves, rather than clarifying, can disorient. The disorienting, overwhelming effect of too much information, perhaps--a theme that readily applies itself to our society today, bombarded as it is on all sides by information, oftentimes making the simple complex, rather than vice versa.
This second photo was truly a surprise. This photo is actually of my fish, but the result was something very abstract and quite interesting. There are distinct lines and both dark and light shapes that lead the eye across the image, extending off the boundaries of the photo. The angle the photo was taken at is slightly tilted, but appears to have been taken straight on. The lighting came from an overhead lamp that cast a soft white light down on the scene. Contrast was increased digitally using camera raw to bring out both the dark and lighter shapes.
This photo originally started as a close-up of my pet fish. I was hoping to catch a graceful image of serenity, but two things worked against the image I had originally planned. One, my fish turned just at the moment I pressed the shutter, and two, the camera auto-focused at the last moment not on the fish, but on the glass of his bowl behind him. I was not exactly pleased with the blurry image, but putting the photo into black and white drastically improved it--although it may not exactly evoke serenity, it still recalls a dream-like state, or the haziness of a barely-remembered dream. Most people couldn't figure out what the image was, but responded positively to it. Both the water surface and the edge of the glass fish bowl distort light and create odd reflections, adding to the disorienting experience, yet it's not necessarily an uncomfortable one.
To create this image, I used a large aperture, and got very close to my subject. I've always found fish fascinating creatures, and my fish, suspended in virtually motionless water, almost seems to float around the confines of the bowl. I love getting close up to fish--I'm always amazed by their beautiful fragility, and I feel that they convey the serene especially well. The bowl was lit by a soft overhead lamp, that cast a diffuse light over the counter. The original focus was, obviously, the fish, but the camera focused itself on the bowl behind it, the glass encrusted with calcium. This "mistake" actually turned out to be fairly good technique for getting a more abstract image.
Like I've previously said, the goal was to get a clear, yet serene photo of my fish, suspended in its element. After putting the image into black and white however, the goal became to enhance the contrast and heighten the abstractness of the photo, to create a surreal image.
For this photo, I didn't really take inspiration from any one specific artist. If anything, I was hoping to take inspiration from many naturalist photos that I've seen, but obviously, things didn't turn out that way. I could cite Imogen Cunningham again, as she is the only photographer besides Weegee that I know anything about at this point--both of our photos look at nature, although mine abstracts it perhaps a bit more. In this instance, what one would assume to be the focal point is blurred, and the focus is on details, such as the calcium deposits, that might not usually have attention drawn to them. It's amazing that, even in this culture where so much can be explained away by science, that dreams, and the mind in general, still remain so mysterious to us. This photo, like a dream, doesn't quite make sense.....yet it still makes an impression, and that is what we remember, and what affects us.
Of the remaining three photos that I haven't yet talked about, I think I'll address the doorknob
one. I got a lot of comments on it surprisingly--it was another photo that I thought would be a flop, but turned out to be interesting once it made it to black and white. Thank goodness I didn't delete any of my photos--I'd have nothing to show for this assignment! The focal point of this photo, the doorknob, rests in the lower right-hand corner, just barely touching the photo frame, while shadows enter the frame from the left, streaking towards the knob. The photo was taken looking down at the subject, and close to it. The original photo did not have much contrast in it, but I manually increased the contrast in camera raw to bring out the shadows a bit more. The lighting was very dim; the knob was only lit by the light escaping through a crack in the door behind me. The knob, which has a greater variation of shades within it, becomes emphasized in the overall image, against the less contrasting shadows and wood.
To me, this image is one of mystery. Doors always mark the boundary between one room and the next, one experience and another; and it is behind doors that secrets are kept. Many elements add to this sense of mystery. The photo is eerily dark and indistinct. We see the door knob and recognize it as such, but not the door edge. The shadows reaching toward the knob are unidentifiable, and there is a feeling of foreboding and dread that accompany the image.
To create this photo, I used only what light was coming through the crack in the doorway behind me, and I got very close to my subject. I was thinking about the idea of "dread", and one of the scariest images I could think of was a closed door in a dark home, with something unknown behind it, or opening it. Shadows with no recognizable source can also cause "dread", especially at night, so I created the shadow using my own hand, taking the photo with just one hand, resulting in the strange, almost putty-like texture of the knob. The camera shudder actually worked quite effectively, I believe, in creating an atmosphere of dread, since it almost seems as if the photographer is shaking, and distracted by the surroundings.
My goal was to create an image of dread, through the manipulation of light and shadow in an indoor setting. This was among my first photographs taken, and so was fairly experimental, but the off-center focal point, shadow, dim light, and even my own unsteady hands created an image that makes the knob worthy of a second look, and hopefully unsettling as well.
I took my inspiration for this photo not from any single artist, but from a genre, particularly a film genre. The dark lighting and heavy use of shadows of the noire films of the 30's and 40's were my main inspiration. Directors such as Fritz Lang made heavy use of shadow to evoke an atmosphere of anxiety, and I try to use shadow in a similar way. Due to the shake of my hand however, my image relies just as heavily on the blurring of object boundary lines to get across a feeling of unease. For however advanced mankind seems to be, the fear of the unknown is a fear that continues to remain with us, and I hope that my image evokes that primordial dread.
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