Squares and A Five

Dear Reader

I have news. As of about 3 weeks ago, I can now be found on Instagram at artspud80.  The square format presents a new challenge, because I am usually so very conscious (or at least try to be) of the full rectangular frame.  This means that many of my decent photos don’t work when cropped.  So,  one solution is to take photographs  with the destination in mind.  That would mean one for Instagram and one for project x.  You could just say, hey why don’t you just load rectangular photos into Instagram. It is not a bad suggestion but where is the fun in that?

In other news, I have been thinking about what constitutes a 5 star image.  Really good photos have a completeness about them that resonates with something more than just the visual eye.  I rarely a capture 5 star image, and in fact, today’s photo is the first of the year.  You may well question the score, and I’m ok with that.  It is not really a wow photo, but there is nothing about it that I would like to change, whether it be focus, colour, light, or composition.  It just needs to be printed big.  It has calm, structure, tension, and it holds my attention – it is a winner, and that makes me smile.  I hope you enjoy it.  What do you think or feel?

2017-08-five-01

Cheers, Sean

4 Replies to “Squares and A Five”

  1. I also looked at this photo last night and found it too much for this left-brained thinker to understand. But looking at it again, I realize it stirs my emotions. For me, the photo mostly depicts harmony until my eye is drawn to the lower right. The nail reminds me what a bullet hole would look like. In fact, that’s what I thought it was at first until I looked more closely. So the photo actually gives me a sense of foreboding. Now that I’ve let my right brain take over, I think it is a very strong photo and really well done.

  2. I looked at this last night and thought you had lost your marbles. Looking at it this morning, I’m beginning to get it. They (the authoritative they) talk about the rules of composition, and that there are times to break them. Putting the nail at one of the intersections of thirds would have followed that rule, but would be too obvious, too pedestrian. My thought would have been to try to put it in a Fibonacci place, and crop the photo to 1:1.618 ratio. Perhaps the dimensions of the photo don’t permit that, or once done, it was too obvious as well. Resolve photo will print it big, at a very reasonable price.

    1. Thank you. You give me far more credit than I deserve. I actually wasn’t thinking of the rule of thirds or the golden ratio. The nail is in the position that worked in the frame. And now, for a moment of geekness. The golden ratio can be traced at least as far back as the Parthenon (aprox. 440 BC). Fibonacci (12th century AD) and his sequence didn’t appear until much later. Wikipedia, though says that the origin for the sequence is Sanskrit. While we are going down the rabbit hole, the first recorded instance of 0 was found in what is now Cambodia. I know this because I just finished reading the book “Finding Zero” by Amir D Aczel).

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