Shapes
Welcome back! It’s been two months since my last entry and I feel like only recently I’m recovering some kind of groove. So this will be another brief one.
Most of what follows are monochrome, because I’m finding it’s really how I’m thinking about most scenes that catch my eye. What grabs my attention are shapes and structures, and colour almost becomes a distraction.
To whit:
The post-processing is a bit more high-contrast than I usually like to do, but given the lack of directional light I thought the horizontal banding of the trunks compared to the vertical stripes of the grass needed a bit of emphasis.
Shapes and structures are a bit easier to tease out with man-made object, and old farm equipment makes a nice playground for compositional study. The first is a bit silly, the underside of a tractor seat. I left it in colour because the shapes are clear, and I like the contrast between the rust and steely blue:
Under the Tractor, by Seymour Butts…
But I kind of like the light-play on the next (even if I have reservations about the inclusion of the “semi-circles” on the top and bottom right), and really like the mech-animal impression of the third:
There’s something almost puppy-like about that last one…
On the most frigid days I played around with some minimalist views, mostly from the roadside, dashing out of the car and dashing back in when my fingers couldn’t take it anymore. The skies were ridiculously clear, and made long views exquisite, at least to the eye. Not sure I capture it though:
To me there is something frighteningly severe about the above shot, how the sharp clipped grass pokes out of the hard wind-blasted snow. Perhaps you had to be there, because every time I look at it I remember my frosty fingers.
As the weather warmed, different opportunities emerged. I have this fascination with old stumps, I love the weathered wood textures, and with a shallow depth of field I can get that much-needed separation from the rest of the scene:
Finally, my favourite recent photo. Many things came together on this, both planned and unplanned, and happily the unplanned emphasized the planned:
I have too many thoughts about this shot, and am probably guilty of severe over-analysis, but in case anyone is interested in any of that…read on. The initial shot was just of the tower, with the deer-packed snow trail forming a leading line. I had planned for the shot to be in black-and-white, intending to emphasize the scale of the tiny man-made object on the edge of the field. But then a young family came out of the tower, adding an unplanned active human element, and thank goodness for the kids in their little red coats! The whole point of taking the shot was to show the environment dwarfing the human (which, if I’m being honest, is my favourite thing about living here), and the presence of the family, tiny in the open space, only emphasizes this further.
All that said, it’s not “dramatic” or “moody”, so definitely not everyone’s cup of tea.
And dat be dat… Work has settled back into normalcy, the days are longer and warmer, and the first flocks of birds are returning already, so hopefully I’ll be back to a more regular schedule.
Cheers!
