reflecting trees © Lilly Schwartz 2011
Years ago I took a picture of a ladybug which was sitting on a leaf that was full of holes. With the reds and greens it was perfectly discernible what it was, but I wanted a different expression. I altered the picture so that the leaves were a faded plasticky white with violet borders and the ladybug turned blue. It looked utterly weird and still, I could perfectly see what it was. However, other people would just say “What is THAT?” and pull a face trying to it see better. As soon as I told them what it was there was this moment of recognition and their faces relaxed.
Sometimes it is important to take a different angle and try to see things from a new perspective. In photography this is in my opinion an important aspect of taking interesting pictures. In fact when people cannot figure out the perspective and position from where a shot is taken it unsettles them and they spend a lot more time looking at a picture if they want to “understand” it. If they don’t want to, well, then they’re probably not my target audience anyway.
Yesterday’s picture is one of those experiments with perspective and angles. It is actually the reflection of trees in a puddle taken in black and white.
In fact yesterday I definitely was in a monochrome mood and therefore took lots of pictures meant to be in black and white. At home I then had a little surprise when transferring the pictures from my new 8GB SD card: I had taken the pictures in the RAW format and not realised that iPhoto wouldn’t be able to understand my Canon’s colour presets. Next time I will have to shoot both in RAW and in JPG to figure out which pictures are meant to be in colour and which were supposed to be monochrome. Well, it’s all a big learning experience …
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Thanks for your like! I reposted you a bit today…I love your blog! Thanks for the great work!
Thank you so much Alissa! I feel honoured to be quoted on your blog. And I thoroughly enjoyed looking at your paintings, keep at it!
In many ways it’s such a simple picture but so full of depth. It’s dark and mysterious, I feel like something which cannot be spoken of is hiding in the tree. The tones are lovely and I can just keep looking at the picture for a long time – and get completely caught by it. Great graphics that supports the ambience of the picture.
Thanks for your comment! It’s also one of my favourites, because it’s just an unusual perspective of something very simple. The simplicity actually makes it interesting in my opinion. At the same time the black and white enhances the atmosphere. Still, it’s one of the pictures you can easily skip over, because it doesn’t have the usual aspects of a beautiful picture.
Wonderful weblog!
Thanks 🙂