A reader wrote to me saying she is never quite sure how to comment on an image. I realized that my many years of art training helps me comment on photography and art. So I’m hoping that with this post we can help those who would like help with imagery commenting ideas. If you have suggestions to offer, please leave some in the comments. I may add to the post with some of your ideas.
Using a list of formal elements I learned from an art teacher, here are some ideas:
- Medium and materials: what did the artist/photographer use to create the image? One could ask a question or comment about the camera, the lighting, the photo editing software.
- Composition: what is placed where in the composition? How is the rectangle (if it is one, and it usually is) broken up? Example: “An expected composition, with a diagonal going down one side where one would expect a vertical”
- Color: is it one color? Many colors? Bright colors? Contrasting colors? Do they colors appeal to you? Example: “Love the combination of purples with reds and greens”
- Light: What is the light source of the subject? How does it effect the overall presentation? Is it warm, cool, natural, artificial?
- Style: Does it remind you of a certain style or school of artists? Is it realistic or fantasy-like? Pop art? Classical?
- Depth: How far back does the photo/painting take you? Are you close to the subject or far away? How did the artist achieve those results? Example: “Wow, that field is vast” or “the dog looks like he’s going to jump right out of the picture and unto me!”
- Motion: Did the artist/photographer create motion in the image? Does that feel good or make you dizzy?
- Theme, Mood: Is there a basic theme to the image? Loneliness? Glee? Serenity? Chaos? Disconnect? Family bonding? If you think a photo has a certain theme, you can ask if that’s what the photographer intended. Or just say, “serene”, if you are staring at a calm lake surrounded by colorful fall trees.
For further reading:
Formal Visual Analysis
Composition and Design Principles
If you would like to test out some of these descriptive ideas, you may comment on the painting in the upper right corner by Van Gogh. Click on it to see a larger version and more information.
I took these photos yesterday in various spots around our little borough of Highland Park, New Jersey. The above photo is looking down North Fifth Avenue.
This one was taken outside the supermarket. Hard to believe we had snow here on Tuesday.
The flag is flying high above the Highland Park Public Library.
For more Skywatch participants, please visit:
My snapdragons seem to be thriving in the cool fall weather.
More snapdragon photos:
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this lovely photography meme.
Enjoy a bearded lady and supermarket mouse at Benji’s What War Zone who presents Haveil Havalim #188, the blog carnival with the best of the Jewish and Israeli Blogosphere.
About the photo: I couldn’t find funny, so you will have to settle for weird. The blurry photo of my marigolds (orange and yellow) and zinnia (pink) was taken as part of last week’s Thematic Photographic theme of blur.
I took these two photos last Friday afternoon, right before sunset. They were both taken from the same corner of my porch that I took many of my previous SkyWatch photos.
The second one was taken about ten minutes after the first.
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Carmi, who runs a weekly photography meme, is looking for “happy” for this week’s theme. And I missed participating in Ruby Tuesday this week, but the links are still up on Mary’s site, so here’s my Ruby Thursday post. So this post covers two photography memes.
You can tell my daughter (her name is NOT Carmi) is acting, because she’s not looking at me. Sometimes she’s a great model for the camera.
I took a lot of photos of the chrysanthemum in front of my house, as it’s in full bloom.
See other mum photos:
Today’s Flowers is hosted by Luiz Santilli Jr. Thank you, Luiz, for this fun photography meme.
How does one purposely produce a blurry picture? At night, with little lighting, it is easy, because the camera wants to open the shutter for longer, allowing in more light. No one stays perfectly still at a party (this was taken at a Simchat Beit HaShoeva at my kids’ school), so I got lots of blurry pics.
In the middle of the day, however, it’s a bit harder. I set my camera to shutter speed priority, selected a slow setting so the shutter would stay open longer, and got the above photo.
Yesterday I took a photo of a bee on a mum that I love; however, that one blurred only the background. So this time I challenged myself to blur the main subject as well. I achieved the bee on mum with background blurred by setting the aperture as priority, sort of opposite of the technique the above photos.
For more blurry photos, see Carmi’s post on Thematic Photography 20 – Blur.
I took these photos of the same area of sky, looking southwest from my house, in late September and early October. If you click on the little thumbnails, you will be taken to my Flickr account. It was my first experiment with using Flickr. It helped me organize this post.
This one is my favorite:
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I worked hard to get the background behind the bee to blur. The aperture value was 2.8, the lowest on my camera, which seems to be what causes the background to blur.
Carmi’s theme this week is blur.
A reader wrote to me saying she is never quite sure how to comment on an image. I realized that my many years of art training helps me comment on photography and art. So I’m hoping that with this post we can help those who would like help with imagery commenting ideas. If you have suggestions to offer, please leave some in the comments. I may add to the post with some of your ideas.
