Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Organic triangle

If the truth be told, most of my images are documentary in form, meaning I observe and I capture. I do have an eye for the natural arrangements that happen around me, be it a hand full of late summer peppers Lin has laid on the kitchen counter or a bowl of fruit that happens to be on the buffet counter inside of the window. Add the accent provided by natural lighting and the eye is called to notice.

So, no, I don't spend a great deal of time finessing objects into pleasing arrangements. But I will admit to recently being bold enough to think I can improve on what is found. And so there is a little movement here, a tuck there, and a turning towards the light, and most times what was initially pleasing becomes a resoundingly pleasurable visual experience. As might be expected, sometimes the urge to finesse happens again on the computer screen. Mostly it is the blending of layers with transparency that is added to make the final image.

This image illustrates what I have spoken of above. First the peppers were noted in the rippling late afternoon window light. Add a smaller one's nose to fill the right edge void. Camera position was moved around to emphasize the lines of composition. The only finessing that happened was rotating the foreground stem so that the shadow made an interesting pattern...notice the difference between the left closer one and the one on the right. It's all about light and shadow because they define shape and space as does color in this case.

Just opening a window into how I work with capturing my original images...

jim