Photography Shape and Form

Photography Shape and Form

What I see, and what I through a camera lens are often two different things. I’ll see something so interesting that I immediately want to take a photograph and yet when I look though the eye piece I choose not to take the shot, it doesn’t do the live version justice. I refer to four huge blooming dog woods that I looked at from every angle. Beautiful but boring. I record it to memory instead of on a memory stick.

That logic can also work in reverse. A simple object or scene may look ordinary but the camera lens allows me to isolate just part of the scene or object eliminating all the other distractions turning the basic into exciting. I enjoy taking photographs of landscapes or objects because they are beautiful just as they are and it’s a nice shot. But abstracting them by positioning myself in relation to the scene and where the light is directed I can turn the scene into negative and positive shapes by type and color.

When I drive down my favorite back road in Lititz I never grow tired looking at the crop patterns, which horses are standing in a huddles, which shade trees the cows picked lay under and how all of this can dramatically change based on the time of day and the season. I missed a shot last week when a farmer cut down several rows of corn leaving a view of what it would be like if you had x-ray vision, seeing into the middle of a field. The corn was shades of dried up brown but with just enough deep green for color and with a late morning burst of sun, the edges glowed bright gold. I could kick myself because I didn’t get out of the car to shoot the picture. It’s a winding road, with blind corners, and cars impatiently sharing the road with the occasional buggy, not an easy place to just pull over. Excuses.

I call this photo Ribbed Barn. I love the contrast of line, shape and color.
Vertical grass, vertical covering, vertical panels on the barn, free-form clouds.
Horizontal green shape, horizontal silver shape, triangular gray shape creating negative space in the blue sky.
Plants, Steel, Water.

See framed photography in the LifeStyle catagory on Bakagain.