Low Contrast

These are my candidates for B&W "low contrast" photos. They are supposed to have a silky feel to them, a sort of ephemeral quality. Like I said, I have difficulty with these because I'm not sure where the eye is supposed to go. Your thoughts?

"Hot" Contrast

Hi, friends. My assignment for this weekend is actually a little more involved than I originally explained. I also need to come up with a B&W high- (or "hot") contrast image, a B&W low-contrast image, and an image with one color dominant. Yes, this is quite a tall order. The high-contrast I find easier because I'm naturally drawn to bright whites and dark blacks. So, which do you think is the strongest candidate?

With My Compliments ...

I've been obsessing about this weekend's assignment all week; complimentary colors. I was being a bit of a philistine about it, thinking that I should just magically stumble upon my source of inspiration without having to create it. "Food." I thought. Purple plums and yellow ... yellow what? Well plums aren't in season anyway. Okay, strawberries and leafy green lettuce. Who doesn't love red and green? So I went to the grocery store, but the emergency squad was there and I'm allergic to what they were dealing with, so I promptly left for another store. I arrived home with my produce in hand, and saw that my neighbor was mowing his lawn. His green lawn. With a red mower. So naturally I stopped him to capture the essence of a late Spring afternoon. I shot the berries and lettuce too. Still, nothing was doing it for me. And I thought of my sister reminding me that I have a green purse. More than one actually, but I digress. I also have a red shawl. But that came out too much red and not enough green. Finally, I looked around, exasperated. Books! We only have a hundred-thousand books ... so I arranged them just so.

Electric

You know when your driving 65 mph down the highway and the car in front of you slams on his breaks and you slam on your brakes and you think you're going to crash but you don't and you get this sort of electric shock in your finger tips from the moment? That's the feeling I got when I took this picture.

Have you ever felt that?

I Dreamed of a Circle

Hi friends. My class is moving fast and furious as I scurry to keep up. My current assignment; circles, triangles, rectangles. Real and implied. I wanted to play the 10,000 Maniacs Circle song for you as you think of what an 'implied' circle means, but alas, you'll have to go here if you want to sample it.

* A special note to Stephanie. Thank you for visiting and thank you for taking the time to comment. Blogspot would not allow me to post your comment but I hope you keep coming!

Cemetery

I love visiting cemeteries, not because of any romantic notions of death, but to read the headstones and try to piece together a story of family and society from these remnants of the past. I visited Greenlawn Cemetery recently and was moved by how poetically Victorians memorialized their deceased loved ones. One can find the graves of small children, young soldiers who fought in the Civil War, famous business magnates who gave their names to businesses and skyscrapers downtown, famous writers, and elderly gentlemen who apparently enjoyed fishing.

Because of the mature trees, dense undergrowth, and a pond, Greenlawn Cemetery is also know as a nature refuge where exotic migrating birds can be spotted on their way north or south, depending on the season. It seems like a nice place to spend your afterlife, doesn't it?

Searching for Order

The other night, my husband and I were listening to music together (Beethoven, to be specific), and he said, "Listen ... he's searching for order." And then it hit me - that's what I'm doing when I take a picture. Searching for order. 

And I'm sure it's different for every photgrapher, professional or amateur. What is it that you are doing when you take a picture?

Line, Pattern, Texture, Rhythm

Years ago, as a first year art student, I remember leaving my first oil painting class with something of an epiphany. I walked around seeing the whole world differently; infused with qualities I hadn't noticed before. I saw bands of light dragged across a green lawn, and the curly darkness of leaves against the sky. Photography provides some of the same heightened sensory experience. The difference, in my mind, is that photography isn't so much an art of creating, but an art of seeing and editing.

Last week I was asked to focus on line, pattern, texture and rhythm. Once I get into a project, I see the things all around me and try to fit it into a visual framework. But then I'm asked to focus on something else entirely and want to protest because I still have all this line, pattern, texture and rhythm to explore. The idea, I suppose, is to incorporate all of these ideas into a single vision.

Calm

I worked on some pretty serious projects this week. Long hours and tight deadlines had several people scurrying to get things done. At the end of it all, a colleague asked if she could ask me a personal question. I nodded. She said, "Amidst all the chaos and madness, you've reamined calm the whole time. What is your secret?" I was flattered, but I felt, wrongly. She must have heard me blink three times. I hadn't recalled feeling anything close to calm all week. I can't remember my actual response, but it was something like, "What does drama get you?"

I listen to music. I put on perfume. I step away from my desk.

How do you remain calm in a storm?