artamaze by Katherine Hilden

A Compelling Image

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Landscape, Pattern, Seeing, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged composition, landscape, Mary Shieldsmith on December 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Yes, I know what this is. This image shows skinny bare tree trunks in a dry hilly landscape.

What makes the stripes on the ground?

The stripes? Let’s see. Oh, the stripes are made by the shadows from the tree trunks. Must be that the sun is low on the horizon.

Kinda cool?

Yeah, pretty cool.

It’s not that you’re reminded of that afternoon in the state park, because you weren’t there, you didn’t take the photo.

It’s not that the image depicts some sexy scene.

Why is this image so compelling, even hypnotic?

Oh, I can chat about it. Try this: Lines intersecting, over and over, with variation of angle, never mechanical, never repetitious. Focused attention, like cross-hairs. Rhythm. Percussion. There is no focal point. No point of rest. Your eye is constantly moving. The effect is purely visual, purely formal, not depending on any narrative. No “appealing colors.”

If you only think this image is “pretty cool,” I suggest you frame it. Frame it large or project it on your large TV screen and look at it every day so that the memory of it will keep you awake at night without you knowing why on earth this is happening to you.

The past several posts have been about the power of composition. This image is the culmination of all these past three month of looking and thinking about images here at artamaze.

Of all the things that grab you in an image—color, narrative, symbolism, etc.—the most powerful is composition.

Try to get some sleep.

Photo by Mary Shieldsmith

Attention

Posted in Composition, literalness, Pattern, Quotes, Seeing, Technique and Demo, Therapy, tagged attention, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Nicolas Malebranche on November 24, 2020| 1 Comment »

NOW WHAT!! You want us to look at your boring geraniums in your boring kitchen???!!!

What caught my attention was how the afternoon light made the stems glow. On the right, see that? See how the stems are outlined in yellow?

How would my camera see that? As I framed the shot, before I zoomed in on that light effect, I noticed intimations of the Golden Section.

Not one, but two. In the green lines, the square is on the left. In the pink, the square is on the right. As a bonus, the red blooms define the corner of the next square in the Golden Section sequence.

In my peripatetic readings I recently came across a quote from Nicolas Malebranche: “Attention is the natural prayer of the soul.” He had to talk like that because he was a Catholic priest trying to stay alive in 17^th century France. He’s classified as a rational philosopher, working in the shadow of Descartes: notice the word “natural” in front of “prayer.”

1600 years before that, Epictetus said: “You become what you give your attention to. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will … and their motives may not be the highest.” Epictetus was born a slave in the Roman Empire and became the teacher of Marcus Aurelius.

So, the difference between boring and ta-dah! is not out there in those overwintering geraniums but in that switch in your brain. You can practice throwing your attention switch. You can pivot from worry about your to-do list to…attention, now.

Nicolas Malebranche, 1638-1715

Epictetus, 50-135

Marcus Aurelius, 121-180

Light Slivers

Posted in abstraction, Color, Composition, Illustration, Landscape, Pattern, Seeing, Technique and Demo, tagged color vs. black/white, composition, landscape, light effect on November 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »

After you’ve identified this photo as a so-what view of a lawn, check that off and see if this might have some formal element worth noticing.

It does. You can see it better in black/white.

The light zig-zags down from top to bottom with increasing looseness as if it came from some juggler’s pen light.

That’s it? Yes, for this little exercise in seeing it’s enough to notice that the slivers of light appear to be superimposed on a surface.

The light slivers exist on one plane and the grass on another. If you also notice that the grass makes vertical lines and the light forms horizontal lines, you’ve got a composition worth contemplating.

I’d like to print this up in high resolution, 6 ft high, and position it at the end of a long hall way.

My camera clicked it in color. We are used to seeing images in color. But color is not necessarily more powerful than b/w. Do you agree that the b/w is a more stimulating image?

Btw, all this is relevant to both photography and painting. Not such a little exercise, after all.

This Won’t Sell

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Cropping, literalness, Pattern, tagged lines and dots, no curb appeal on November 2, 2020| 2 Comments »

No real estate agent would like this photo. It doesn’t show off the house. No curb appeal! And what’s with the trees!?

Sorry, sir/madam, this picture is not about the house. It’s not even about Halloween.

Well, what then!!! –It’s not about anything.–Sound of doors slamming.

This is the last of three frames I took of this scene. The first two have too much context. Then I saw the juxtaposition of the straight vertical trees and the pumpkins marching horizontally. Click.

I saw an image, a play of lines and dots.

Here’s the first shot, rejected, due to too much information/illustration.