Monday 16 October 2017

Shadowy Ferns

Following my break from photoblogging I have now decided to drop the week-by-week order that I have previously used for my posts. This reflects the reduced number of outings with the camera during the summer and it allows me more flexibility with the content.

Working week-by-week has been beneficial though. The discpline of taking photos virtually every day has gradually altered my approach to photography. These days I am more likely to construct an image based on the components of a composition rather than a picture or a scene. Components include lines, angles, shapes, patterns, textures, light, shade, colours, and tones. Images constructed in this way tend to be more interesting and ocassionally more challenging to look at and interpret. That said, I still like pictorial representations but these tend to be a small part of my photographic output. The following selection is an example of this changed approach.

Ferns in summer tend to be a mass of green which often does not translate well for photography. Within that mass are some wonderful shapes and curves but the problem is how to isolate these in the image. The solution involves inverting the image so the dark areas become light and the light areas become dark. It works best if light is catching the subject frond(s) and there is shadow behind. When inverted the subject becomes dark and background ferns become faint and shadow-like. A conversion to black and white is required for the final finish:







1 comment: