Photographic Themes - One landscape, 4 interpretations

For this assignment I chose a theme of nature shots. I took a photo emphasizing each of the four aspects of deep space, light and shadow, vantage point, and color and tone. I enjoyed this assignment greatly and even decided to throw in a few shots that did not expressly work for these themes but I thought fit other categories of shots. The following photographs were taken in the Arboretum in Ann Arbor, MI during the month of September.

Deep Space

This image was taken of a small brick and stone building on the property. I like it for deep space because the end of the building is right at the edge of the photograph and yet the angle this photo was taken at makes it seem as if this is a brick wall that continues on indefinitely.

 Light and Shadow

 

I chose two photographs to emphasize light and shadow. The first image emphasizes light and shadow by showcasing a shadow as the focus of the image rather than the light as usually emphasized in light vs. dark contrast photographs.  The second catches the light in a way as to frame the leaves to the right in sunlight, and highlight shadows of other leaves on top of more below.

Vantage Point

This image shows a detailed version of the bark, the part usually not focused on for tree photographs. I also found after I uploaded this image that there is writing on the tree I did not previously notice, and yet the vantage point is angled so as to make it impossible to read...

Color and Tone

This photograph at first looks like a color emphasizing simply the vibrant colors of the plants, but look again and the colors of the small beetle perched on a flower begin to pop. Looking closer, although the colors looks bright and colorful from afar, upon further examining of the petals they are in reality beginning to brown and slowly being eaten away. Although beginning to crumble up close, it appears beautiful from afar.

The following were taken during my photo shoots and I enjoyed their outcome so much I decided to include them as extra items below.

Framing

This was probably my favorite image that I took for this project. The bulk of the tree is framed and blurred out of focus behind that of a single one of the leaves.

 Focus

In this image, although the bird is the brightest item in the photograph, and largely the focus of the image, instead the focus is on the single plant stalks that come up in front creating an interesting depth of field.

Cropping

This image was discovered as I worked in another window and this view of the photograph was seen peeking around the other window. It made for an interesting visual contrast between the triangle sliver of tree and green foliage behind.