That's me being stubborn. I don't WANT it to lead anywhere. I don't WANT my s-curve to have a "reason", I just want it to BE. The challenge will be FULL of s-curves leading us into pictures: winding roads, curving brooks, channels in marshes (which I could have shot, btw), you name it. I bored myself thinking of that. I was gonna go down to the marsh, it's a good time of year for that shot, but I couldn't motivate myself, it bored me even to contemplate it.
Then we'll see, probably, a LOT of flower shots, branch shots, stuff like that, many of them with artfully depending drops of crystalline water inverting what's behind them. I don't even want to go there. It's depressing.
A third category of s-curves will be more similar to what I have, objects-that-have-curves. We'll see, for example, the holes in violins and cellos, we'll see shiny musical instruments, we'll see forks and spoons, whatever inanimate objects are comprised of s-curves. And, see, that's what I like. I like objects being glorified as objects, I like being coerced into viewing objects differently. One way to do that is to remove an object from its context, its usual context. In DPC, that's most often done by isolating an object against, say, a black background. Something like that.
But I didn't want to do that, I wanted something more mysteriously evocative.
So I was holding my fork up (it's a serving fork, BTW, a big one) against the light, by the screen door, turning it this way and that, checking out mainly how well-polished it was (I had just polished my fork) and I LIKED the way that was working, I realized that with the 100mm macro at f/2.8 I would get some cool patterning of screen-and-environment.
So I started shooting that; held the fork in my left hand and the camera in my right hand, twisting and turning. That's the partial-fork image. But was it optimum? Could I SUSPEND the fork? Penny has some thread, so I tied it around the handle at the fulcrum, and tied the other end to penny (so to speak) and had her dangle the fork as I worked on it.
At f/2.8, mind you. I did want shallow DOF. In the end, it's shallower than I expected, really, but the thing of it is, my fork derrick (that'd be Penny) was running out of steam, so I had to go with what I had. And there's an issue with the thread going all moiré against the OOF screen BG, so I had to cope with that in post, and generally it was all a bit of work.
But I like my levitating fork, I really do. I don't mind that it's asking me "why is this fork levitating?" and that I don't know the answer; I don't WANT anyone to know the answer, I just want them to contemplate the essence of fork and the zen of levitation, and go from there :-)
Here's the first, non-levitating fork:
Statistics
Place: 29 out of 82 Avg (all users): 5.8293 Avg (commenters): 6.8750 Avg (participants): 5.7353 Avg (non-participants): 5.8652 Views since voting: 861 Views during voting: 275 Votes: 123 Comments: 17 Favorites: 1 (view)
I like the description almost as much as the photograph. That kind of talk keeps me thinking and keeps me shooting, asking questions and trying to display the answers. Cool shot.
I really liked this photo, and enjoyed voting on it. The background is superb, and the levitation perplexing. This fork looks like its jutting out of the screen. It was underappreciated score wise, but this is still fantastic.
Well, I see I was the only critic of this, Robert. At least the only one who left more than a vote. (It was a 5, BTW) I love what you did with this, and if the topic had been s-curve without the description of it being a compositional technique, then it would have fit to a "T" and gotten a very high vote from me.
This does reinforce my belief that having a visually strong image is a much greater factor on DPC than meeting all possible interpretations of the topic.
I'm reviewing this challenge a second time after considering what the s-curve technique is really supposed to be. Though an S-curve is clearly visible in this, I don't find that it functions as an element that leads my eye to the subject. If anything, my eye lands first on the subject of the fork head, and the s-curve attempts to pull my eye away from it. One of the more interesting fork shots I have seen however. What is creating that criss cross pattern in the backgound?
If I saw this photo without knowing it was yours...I'd give it an 8! Really love this one, Bear! The background yellow bothers me slightly and reminds me of that old 1950's greenish / yellow wall color. So, that would be my only nattering naybob nitpick. Color in this photo is a huge strength and you should make the most of it. The color in the fork itself...PERFECTION!
As for composition, I can't help but wonder how the fork would look at a stronger diagonal. Okay...so this is my third penny on on top of my two cents...;-)
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