Schnee ist gefallen!

Poststructural Pub
41

Uh..yes. How could I make it up? lol

There are a lot of dead berries on the trees, so tomorrow I am going to pick all of them off and then take more pictures so I won’t have to try to get the dead ones out of the way in the picture. Being a live berry myself, I’d rather not take pictures of dead ones. Like me, these berries are also poisonous; that’s why the birds don’t eat them.

How do you do that, and how much does it cost?

I do have a flash, but I don’t go outside after dark.

edited because I can’t spell and should be doing homework anyway…

42

It’s a gift . . . what can I say.

Funny, ain’t it though, how Silvano and I just completely disagreed on the berry photo?
Art is subjective, if anything.

It’s very subjective. Let’s see . . . my problem with the berry thing is that it’s too “in your face.” You have to study it to figure out what the orange balls are. And study it some more to figure out which of the gray sticks are the berry branches and which are the glom of trees in the background. This is all complicated by the fact that there aren’t any actual recognizable berry branches, but just a lot of mixed up twigs.

It’s very busy. Disjointed and hyperactive. Too much stuff in the shot. It’s not clear what the point is – is it the berries or is it the trees? Must be the berries, but those trees confuse things.

It’s also straight on. Wham. No lines to speak of. No up, no down. There actually isn’t even any depth, because nothing in the front ties into anything in the background.

On the other hand, the color of the berries against the snow is spectacular. There are different sizes and, just considering the berry bush, there IS depth. So, it’s a good subject.

If you could pick out a part of the bush that had line to it, like an arching branch, or a distinctively branching branch, and get it against only the snow or the sky – the contrast of the orange and the blue would be excellent – you’d have a good photograph.

If you could get a bush like that against a very interesting background, like a gray barn or building, or an old fence, then that would work in that you’d be looking through this mass of color to something interesting.

You’re right about this working in a metal-industrial frame. Depending on how you approach it, you could have this kind of industrial-color thing or you could have a botanical-symmetry thing.

Can you shoot it from underneath? So you get the sky as a background? Or from above at a slight angle, so you get the snow as a background?

43

Daniel, thanks for all your feedback. I’m curious–why wouldn’t it be real? I took it here on campus today. The only thing I did to it was cut off part of the side and resize it.

It just seems “active,” “cluttered,” and “turbulent” to me, not necessarily uncomfortable. Fiona Apple says, “I’m good at being uncomfortable,” and I’m like that too. Like Fiona, I find that can “do” uncomfortable better than most people, so mabey that’s why the picture seems uncomfortable to you and not to me.

To me, it feels like those days where you have 10,000 things to get done and can’t even do one–your whole mind is everywhere but where it’s supposed to be.

44

Cran,

This is how we expect a subject like your berries to be dealt with:

Standing alone with a complementary background

or

emphasized using focus and composition with more of the same in the background




Instead your berries are presented scattered and “in your face”, against a background that has a totally different and peaceful feeling.

So like Salvador Dali’s work, it’s uncomfortable but cool.

I can recommend framing, but I don’t do it. Or actually, haven’t done it in years since my classes in gallery and exhibitions ended.

BTW, where can I find Walden’s photos?

45

Why do you expect it, to be dealt with like that, though? I don’t understand why… :confused:

I also don’t think “in your face” is always a bad thing. Life is not always lovely and calm.

46

He means that the typical person’s expectation, when looking at a typical photo of berries, would be to see it composed in the ways he states.
It is precisely because it’s NOT presented in an expected fashion that the photo is strangely compelling, (and uncomfortable for some.)

No, nor do I. It can be an interesting and provocative thing. That’s part of the point Daniel is making, I think.

47

I’m not a typical person, I’m afraid. :slight_smile:

:wink:

48

No? Who’d have guessed?

49

Walden thunk it long, long ago.

50

Beautiful! I especially like that one with the walkway… very good composition and contrast in that one particularly. All good.

51

Yeah! Double Bingo Emm.

I use the word “uncomfortable” metaphorically. Like a deep muscle massage.

Your berry photo is like a deep muscle massage - where I don’t know if I groan because it hurts, or because it feels good. But I know I like it.

Hmmm. another metaphor.

52

Sometimes a picture is just a picture.

53

Agreed. I’m a point-and-shoot man, just like your cat. :smiley: I might get arty-farty about playing slow airs or summat, but when I take pics I have to leave the camera in charge of such matters as good taste.

Steve

54

I LOVE your house, emm! And I really like all the large trees in your yard. I want to see what it looks like in the autumn when it looks so nice in winter.
Sorry about the wipers. But it’s nice to have a gift… :smiley:

Wish we had some schnee :frowning: … maybe this week.

Regarding photos/art, beauty is in the eye…
There are many photos/pieces that ‘art’ people think are just great that I think are just pretentious or even junk. But it has to be pretty bad before I call it “ugly”.

55

If I had to guess (from the little I’ve learned from my amateur
photographer friend who’s been trying to improve his shots), I’d
say that it differs from what we are used to seeing in profesional
photography. If I were taking the same shot with my friend’s fancy
digital SLR, I’d mess with the focal length (or was it the f-stop?)
until the background was very out of focus, which would bring the
foreground into sharper relief, or somesuch.

Isn’t this called the “Rule of Thirds” or something similar? Ah, here:
http://www.silverlight.co.uk/tutorials/compose_expose/thirds.html

56

You’re probably right about that, though I find myself increasingly in doubt as to whether there exists such a thing as a typical person.

57

Aperture size (f-stop) effects the depth of field (the zone of depth in the image that is in focus).

Assuming there were manual settings on the camera, you could open the aperture all the way, the berries would be in focus and the background a big blur. Then the subject would only be the berries, and the tension created by conflicting foreground and background subjects would be lost. The image would be less compelling - just a nice pic of some berries.

58

Ah, f-stop. Right.


I don’t know, it would still have that weird perspective thing going on:
at first, I thought the closest berries were apples!

59

O. K.
I was a bit tired last night and I had to leave for bed, so my comments were a bit short and therefore misleading you. In fact it’s a very impressive picture just because of the blast you described and also other properties been specified by other contributors (not mentionioning all, it would be like reheat coffee).
My hint of shifting the camera was meant to enforce the motion of the berries. Taking the tree behind out of the middle of the picture would unconsciously attract the eyes more to it and then go back to the berries. This movement of the eyes is a known tool of fotografers to create movement in a picture.

BTW I like your house and also the picture of it too. Looking at it my eyes are attracted to the dark spot of an opened door. Even when you had no intention to be artistic I would aggree with Lambchop:

Cheers
Silvano

60

“There are no ordinary people.” -Clive Staples Lewis

:slight_smile: