The difference between a snapshot and a photographic image in which you can take artistic pride often lies - not in front of you, but between your ears.
Look around; think through your image; and then, think ahead to whatever creative process you employ after the shooting is over. There are often dozens of directions for you to go that take your image from mundane to magnificent.
Today we'll take a look at using the flowers in this bud vase to create several unique images.
For some the mere sight of God's creation to the right is sufficiently beautiful that nothing more need be said. If that's the case for you, and you are satisfied with something like the snapshot at right - more power to you. You need not read on.
However, don't expect to walk into a gallery with a framed image like this and be greeted as the next coming of Edward Weston.
Now, don't get me wrong. There is, of course, a place for images like this. A shop that leans more to the crafts rather than the arts, may be very happy to take this image on consignment. The colors might be exactly right for a piece that a decorator is looking for to add a splash of color to the wall in that ski condo he's been hired to decorate. Pieces like these are quite marketable but they should not be seen - or priced - as art.
Art is created when you take the image to the next level. So lets look at a few ways that this bud vase of flowers can be used to create a piece that the gallery might say yes to.
On the day that I took the photo above, I was visiting a friends apartment. Light was streaming through the window of the kitchen onto the floor and the table at which I sat was shaded by the wall. With permission, I began by moving the table into the light and taking advantage of the arc of the chair's back to add an additional form element to the image.
The first creative image thus combines several new elements to make the flowers important but not singularly important. Instead we employ color, light and form within the context of the image.
After photographing the flower still in the bud vase, I then, with permission, removed the flower heads and placed them on the table - first with nothing else and then later with a glass of wine I had been sipping on. I photographed them in a number of ways but the two images below are my preferred images among many.
Fowerheads and Wine Glass
These images, in my opinion, do not cry out for further embellishment and, in fact, I offer all three for sale in select galleries. However, I did play around with them a bit to create two different Mindscape images that you will see below. The second being nothing less than an accident that I found to be interesting nonetheless.
Flowerhead Mindscape 1
Floating Flowerhead Mindscape
Sometimes an images background is just so distracting that it makes the image unusable. Of course there are the more extreme solutions to this such as cutting out the background altogether but in the case of this bittersweet pictured right, removing the background is for practical purposes impossible because the berries are so numerous that they can't be selected out.
