Reflecting on Light

Posted on 25.6.09 - View Comments

Reflecting on Light.


I think this is my favorite water lily photo I've ever taken. It actually might be my favorite flower photo I've ever taken.


Yesterday I ran over to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens after work, and to my pleasant surprise met ~Amabile~, whose work I've always admired and really loved. She ran out of card space and I ran out of battery, but it was really neat to watch her work.


As many of you know, flickr is one of three or so ways I attempt to improve my photography. I look at other images, and ask myself: "why does this stand out to me?" It occurred to me yesterday that in order to internalize what I'm learning, and replicate it in my work, I in some way have to be able to describe it. I have to be able to quantify a graphic art in words.


The way to be able to do that is to have vocabulary to describe photography. Words like crop factor, leading lines, hard light, soft light, harsh, gentle, saturated, monochrome... and many more like it. Sometimes, I sit there at an image I like and just come up with "tags" almost that describe the image. It sounds really stupid, but it really does help. As recently I'm obsessed with light, most of the time these days I'm drawn to very dramatic lighting, and I try to identify the light source, why it's so graphically powerful, and how I can replicate it in my work. Don't get me wrong... I'm not copying other people's art, but I am trying my hardest to learn from it.


You also have to move beyond the concrete nature of technique and identify message, emotion. How does this shot make you feel? Are you sad, nostalgic, joyous, morose, or angry? And almost more importantly, using that vocabulary, what aspects of this photo capture that feeling?


Anyway, just some thoughts, not really sorted out like they should be.

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