20 Nov Moment to Moment
Yesterday I had the opening for my photo show of images from the meadow behind my house. It was great to share the work with friends. In some ways, I always felt that the show – and the launch of my Kickstarter to make a book of the images- would mark an end to the project. I felt a bit like I had shot the meadow to death and I needed to find something else to focus on.
Then I went for a walk this morning and the frost was on full display. I stopped and made a number of images and then kept walking. As I approached the far end of the meadow I notice a leaf that had a lot of frost on it and the Sun was just beginning to lick the edges of it. I stooped down and shot a few images. It looked pretty good so I started to edit it.
Yesterday during the opening a group of Brownies came in. They were all in 2nd or 3rd grade and they were getting a merit badge based around art and nature. I gave them an impromptu talk on the images and I showed them how I shoot and process them on my phone- and how they could use selective focus and black and white to really draw out shapes and points of focus. One thing I did was show them how I often shoot a dozen or more images of the same thing as I search for just the right angle and framing to fall into place.
As I started to fix the image I noticed that one of the edges of the leaf looked a bit like a wave. I stooped down and shot again, this time trying to find an angle that highlighted the wave just a bit more. When I examined the ones I shot I noticed that the focus was just a little off. By the time I started to re-shoot it the sun was a touch brighter and the frost was already melting. The shot I got was the top of this page. You can see the crystals turning into water on the crest of the “wave”. I started to edit it- turning it from a color image into a black and white one. I’ll post the original one here.
After I finished editing it I noticed that the sun had moved just a little bit more. Now it was casting a shadow of the grass on the far side of the wave. I loved the texture of it and the fact that it looked so luminous. However, once it was processed and I compared all of the images I think the strongest one is the one posted at the top. While I like the texture the contrast in the top one is a bit more arresting and graphic. Further in that image the crystals are in the process of becoming water droplets on the crest of the wave above and in the one below they have melted away completely. Still I like all of them for different reasons and I love that the very simple shifts in angle and time create such subtly different images.
EDIT:
On closer inspection I found one more – the first one I shot after noticing the “wave” in which the crystals are a little sharper in focus.
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