Flickr Friday – #002

Photography has grown on me over a number of years, as well as taking photos, I love seeing and being inspired by other peoples pictures. It has been a while since my last Flickr Friday and I’m keen to get back on to my archive of faves to share with you all and to recall some inspiration too!

Light – By Steph Jennings (October 2008)

All rights reserved, flickr user: Essitam (Steph Jennings)

Steph is a good friend who shared the same college course as me. It’s where we both picked up photography and I have to admit I didn’t really get it back then, but something stuck with me, waiting to be brought back. After leaving our film cameras and parting we were reunited through photography on flickr in a wonderful chance event.

So although there’s a bias in this fave, I do think this is an awesome photograph and wouldn’t look out of place as a book cover. For me photography is about telling a story, and as any good storyteller uses words a photographer uses different aspects of photography to tell the story, colour, light, shade, focus, composition and angles, the photo then says the thousand words as a combination of all that thought. Steph is conveying here the tall walls that provided shade while she was on holiday, but what is also told in the photo for me is the story of the colours chosen and the type of ornate decoration that went into these railings and the almost oil painting process that must have been used to create that wonderful texture on the wall itself.

I also love the light bouncing off the steps, how that has added a gradient fill from top to bottom and that aspect of it is contained within the boundries of the railing, itself framing the colour difference and I think that’s what makes it for me. You can see cleary what is meant by the heat of the day in her description as the shadows are incredibly short. This is a wonderful capture of geometry and at dusk there just wouldn’t have been the contrast to get that wonderful texture coming through, below the steps, it looks very much like the surface of the moon.

Composition has always been for me where you start and this is so very well composed, I think the rule of thirds is something you learn and instantly forget about because it’s in your nature as a photographer to see instantly a well composed scene. I only wish I could hold my camera this straight :)

Posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010