colours and lines

Running with last weeks posts about colour, black & white photography and the colour purple I clicked over for my daily fix of Kats blog and had a 'moment' when I saw her photograph 'Under the Bridge' This picture incorporates my colours and I could look at that picture for hours, it calms my soul. These are the colours I paint my figurative paintings in and I have clothes with patterns in these colours, so looking at this picture is heaven to me.
But it is a little more than that, the subject is 'me' too. There is Architecture, water, my new favourite decay and lines! How thrilling are lines in a photograph, sending your eyes backwards and forwards, around the picture and back to the beginning again. I have hundreds of pictures with 'lines' running through them and this links nicely with Kat's current
Exploring with a Camera theme of Opposing Lines.
'Red Leicester'

Red Leicester has so many lines that when I first saw the picture I had taken, it felt a little overwhelming. When taking it I was drawn to the colours I saw through the lens. The red made a striking foreground against the brown wood and the pale blues of the sky through the windows. The architectural elements were a secondary consideration even though I had gone to Leicester to capture architecture and pattern but all the opposing lines in the picture take your eye off in different directions and somehow it works.



So as with Kat's picture, take the colour away and I would still love it, which is what we have been trying to achieve in black & white photography, although it was the colour that I connected with first in both pictures.
I find this subject fascinating, that you can look at an image and LOVE it, its that subconscious 'knowing' that this picture is just perfect for you. Its when you begin to break down the reasons why you like it that it becomes really interesting and I listen intently to visitors to the Gallery, when after looking around at the many images on the walls they stop in front of one picture and are transfixed. Many times the first comment is "This picture is me" and then, usually when a puzzled friend asks why, they begin to break it down into "I love the colour" or "I love to look at boats" or "I love the pattern". Often people will come in looking for a picture that matches their living room and they leave with something totally the opposite. They come in with a practical head and they leave following their heart.
As I've mentioned before, as an artist you are aware that by painting onto white canvas you are baring your soul to the world with your creation. You are choosing the subject, the colours, the composition and presenting it for admiration and often criticism. Its a scary thing to do sometimes.

I wondered if the same where true of photography, do our pictures have our stamp on them in the same way, could you look at a photograph and say oh yes thats so and so's work. These ponderings inspired the 'Me Reflected Photography Share'
I had been looking for a picture in my portfolio that holds all the elements of the 'me inside' to put in the share and I hadn't found one. Kat's picture would be very close and I wondered why in all my time as a photographer I had never strived to take my perfect photograph and had never analysed what elements I would need in that picture. I have some pictures that I'm very proud of, as I'm sure every photographer does but they have all been reactive photography, something catches your eye and you take the shot. Its not so easy to manipulate nature or buildings into your perfect composition and if you do, it then begins to feel too contrived. Enter the whole debate about photoshoping and if you take out or add parts to an image is it cheating? ....... this is where my head begins to hurt and I realise I'm rambling way off track again and I still haven't loaded the dishwasher......