Context

Here's another context picture for you. 

Walking down what passes for the village High Street I saw this fuchsia flowering by the side of the road. Now it would be a simple thing to snap a picture of the flowers and move on, but what would you have? That would just be another flower picture..

My approach involved a lot of shuffling in the hedge, some crouching down and a certain amount of risk, as traffic does use this road.




Context is important. Consider this: A picture of a Cat is just a picture of a Cat. But a picture of a Cat with the Acropolis in the background is a completely different animal.

So: You can see it was taken on a nice day with pretty thatched cottage in the background. I checked my depth of field before I took the shot: I wanted the cottage to be recognisable but still sufficiently out of focus that it didn't draw the eye away from the flowers. So it is the out of focus cottage that provides the all important context.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The white stuff

Image
Here's a high key picture.  This splendid bloom is presented against a white background to captivate and impress.  This is not a studio picture, I found the subject in a garden we visited. In fact the method I used was to photograph the flower from below and I used the grey sky as a backdrop.  Suitable application of exposure compensation pushes the entire image towards white and gives it the high key look.
Read more

Casting a shadow

Image
Dismal dark depressing dull damp disappointing December. Hmm. Lets remind ourselves of summer when there were shadows in pictures. Lets concentrate on where the light isn't: Sometimes its the shadows that define a picture. Here are some of hard light examples from the Mediterranean, and each one will have needed some exposure compensation. The first images hints at a sunny day. This one gives you the evidence: A clear blue sky glimpsed between shadows. This third image, also from the much rebuilt and restored fort at Paphos , allows us to see more of the building. A pleasing succession of arches and the reward is the sunshine at the end And finally one last shadow picture: One for Arthur C Clark: The Monolith in Newbury Kennet Centre car park. Its been there for 4.2 Billion years. No one knows what it does.
Read more