My prairie grasses glow backlit in the late afternoon sun. I grab the phone, step out the front door and frame the shot.
I love this glow. Oh, how I love this glow, let me count the ways.
What I mean is, if I put the glow in the middle of the frame, the picture will die on me. When we say a picture is “dead” what we’re talking about is our attention. When an image engages your attention it’s because the composition moves your eye through the frame and lights up your brain.
I can tell you how it lit up mine.
In my first shot I took a horizontal view because of the variety of diagonal lines formed by the A) crack in the cement, B) straight line of the wall, C) shadows of the grass and D) tree in the background. That’s nice because it’s the same element (diagonal lines) expressed by different shapes and reference.
The other compositional whammo is the Golden Section. This seems to be built into my retina, because here it is again.
In summary, we have three compositional dynamics working here.
- The horizontal frame establishes a tranquil, thoughtful mood.
- The diagonals, varied and upward moving, are restless, energetic and optimistic.
- The Golden Section anchors you in our aesthetic tradition.
How can this be a worthwhile image to look at? It’s such an ordinary subject matter. If you frame this — not cropped!– somebody coming to your house could make a face and say, are you kidding me? What if you had it as an image filling your 50” TV screen! Ha, look at that.
Consider the composition, pure and simple:
In the next post we’ll go vertical to see what can happen there.
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 
Love this post! I had missed the Golden Section reference until you pointed it out.
Glad to see that you’re back at it following your 2nd shot aka your ‘Ouchie Fauci’ coined in a Twitter post this AM :-).
Things are looking up and we ’spring forward’ tonight too!
K Keven Wilder Cell: 773-636-6289 kevenwilder@mac.com http://www.kwilderart.com instagram.com/kwilderart/
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I eyeballed the Golden Section. The large square looked about right, but just now I took a strip of paper (plenty of those lying around) and verified that the sides are equal. Pretty good eyeballing there, I must say. The smaller square at upper right is obviously a rectangle, far from a square. Let’s call this a “handwaving” Golden Section. Even if the measurements are not all exact, as long as the large square is convincing, the general pattern of the progression is so powerful that the whole thing will come across as the Golden Section. Ding! — Thanks for the reminder about springing forward. With prairie grasses at the front door a body can lose track of civilized time, dontchaknow. Miss you, Chicago.
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