I can hear Ralph Clevenger now – ” . . . never photograph your subject with a fully black background,” “move your point of view to photograph it with something in the background – it adds interest and doesn’t make the subject appear to be floating.”
Do I apologize? Or do I say this was intentional (that wouldn’t matter to Ralph, and after all he is the master), or do I make no excuses?
Tough one isn’t it? Imagine with me for a moment that you are a scale – your left hand speaks the master’s instructions and you know that he is right – your right hand says this was my intention, this is what I created and there is a purpose. What would you do, who would you listen to, who would win? the master or your intention.
If I haven’t learned anything else since graduation from Brooks (or even during my tenure there), I have learned these 2 things:
1.) learn the rules and learn them well, so that when you break them you know why, there is a reason and a purpose for what you do; and
2.) art is subjective, what you create and what inner truth you reveal in your work is all a matter of interpretation, whether it is in the eye of the beholder or the creator, it matters not – what matters is the full expression of your inner self at that moment.
WOW! That’s kind of profound! I amazed even myself with that one!
backlit
While this image has a lot of technical problems, like digital noise and fringe and chromatic aberrations that I can’t remove without a lot of Photoshop time, it is the simplicity, color and back lighting that speak to me – and for that, I don’t apologize or make excuses.
Simply put, I like it. And you are getting my interpretation of the sun, the flower, and the lighting.
So, really, why is the background black? Because it was on the edge of a ravine and the sun was catching it just at the right angle – or maybe it was that I got there just at the right time. There was nothingness below it (from the only vantage point I could get to) except a 50ft drop to the bottom of the ravine, and I wasn’t going there!