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An Evolutionary Viewpoint – One thing leads to another…

As the saying goes, “one thing leads to another”. I find this very true when it comes to my photography. Playing with an object will often stimulate new ideas for how I can present it, or use it differently in conjunction with other items. Sometimes, these pairings are not what you’d usually expect, but often they’re the ones which produce the most challenging photo shoots and satisfying results.

‘One thing leads to another’ is the second blog post in the ‘An Evolutionary Viewpoint’ sequence and explores the mischief I got up to with one of my most photogenic glass vases.

The Vase

Lots of bright colours and triangular shapes – what more could I ask for?

Wanting to bring out these two features, I used strong back light (in this case, the sunlight on my deck) to highlight and intensify the colours.

‘Glass Triangles’

The final result was ‘Glass Triangles’ with its plentiful intermingling of colour and geometric shapes.

The Vase and a Mushroom

Not content to finish there, the next installment of the adventure was to hunt for an item which I could use with the vase somehow.

I found this glass mushroom, the largest in a set of three which adorn the bookcase in our lounge. As I looked closer, I became rather intrigued by the little air bubble on the right-hand side.

I decided to place the vase beside the mushroom and discovered how well the colours were being reflected and distorted around the air bubble.

‘Birth of Colour’

I grabbed my macro lens and dived in very close. The end result turned into a real flight of fancy with the colours ebbing and flowing as if they were born in some cosmic soup. ‘Birth of Colour’ miraculously came into being.

The Vase and a Prism

My next thought was to try the vase with a little triangular glass prism. I felt using strong back light would be the best way to help bring out the intensity of the colours, so I did all of this work right by my window.

Here’s an example of one of my ‘proof of concept’ shots – I do these from time to time just to see if a project is worth persevering with. I wanted to check how well the colours would be picked up in the prism and how well I could utilise the geometric shapes. Obviously, this shot is very busy with a distracting background and a somewhat random array of colours – but as an idea I felt it could work.

‘Imprismed’

So, for ‘Imprismed’, I simplified the structural elements by getting in even closer, focused on a diamond shape and made the colour palette more homogeneous.

Prism Take 2

‘Swirl’

Feeling the urge to try something different with the prism, I chose to experiment with a few movement shots. I had the prism hanging in front of a dark piece of card and the light was catching the little, coloured, plastic beads strung above the prism itself. So, those are the coloured lines in the top half of the picture, while the prism constitutes the more disembodied, amorphous swirls in the bottom half.

One More Step

Ultimately, I was very happy with the journey I embarked upon with my triangular glass vase. However, there was one more step further down the line – a re-imagining of ‘Glass Triangles’ into a triptych format. The story continues with ‘Prismatic’…

‘Prismatic’

Jane Trotter - Creator of Abstracted Reality

Jane Trotter is an abstract photographer living in Dunedin, New Zealand. Reimagining everyday objects found around the home, Jane transforms them into colourful and dramatic pieces of contemporary art. Her Fine Art Prints are available in sizes A4 to A1.

Ansel Adams and 88 Keys

Ansel Adams at the piano, 1982

Ansel Adams is perhaps best known for his stunning, black and white landscape images of the American West, particularly his photographs taken in Yosemite National Park. But perhaps less well known, is that Adams’s first passion was music and the piano.

Adams showed an interest in the piano when he was 12 years old and music became a huge part of his early life. In an interview with Milton Esterow in 1984, the year of Adams’ death, he described his childhood…

Esterow: You grew up as a middle-class kid, and you had the piano, of course. Somebody said that you once described yourself as a hyperactive brat. Is that right?

Adams: Yes, that’s true. Maybe I haven’t grown up. I know I’m hyperactive. I don’t know if I’m a brat.

Esterow: What were the manifestations of your hyperactivity as a kid? I understand you couldn’t sit still in a classroom.

Adams: I had a terrible time with that. One time the whole thing seemed absolutely ridiculous, and I burst into the most hilarious laughter, uncontrollable laughter, and of course I was escorted home under suspicion of dementia.

Esterow: Was music the first thing that gave you order in your life?

Adams: Yes. I had an extraordinarily patient teacher. He knew nothing of contemporary psychology, just sent me home time after time with Bach’s “Invention No. 1” until I knew the notes. Theoretically, that should have completely shattered me and put me in the loony house, but it saved me.

‘Moon and Half Dome’

In the same interview, when describing his transition into photography, Adams stated “Study in music gave me a fine basis for the discipline of photography. I’d have been a real Sloppy Joe if I hadn’t had that.” Elaborating further, he added, “Well, in music you have this absolutely necessary discipline from the very beginning. And you are constructing various shapes and controlling values. Your notes have to be accurate or else there’s no use playing. There’s no casual approximation.”

Adams stated that he would often hear music while photographing. “You see relationships of shapes. I would call it a design sense. It’s the beginning of seeing what the photograph is.”

Unicorn Peak, Thunderclouds

Noticing the parallels, Esterow enquired about Adams’s musical tastes – “Your preferences in music, I understand, are in line with your preferences as a photographer – large structures and the commanding themes, plenty of color. In other words, Beethoven and Bach and Chopin and Scriabin. Is that so?”

Adams replied “Yes, there’s some evidence of precision and structure, nothing amorphous. I don’t react to Debussy.”

Esterow: What about rock ‘n’ roll?

Adams: I just can’t stand it. It’s not a matter of disliking it intellectually, it just does something to my digestion. Lots of contemporary music, I think, is marvellous. There are some wonderful things in electronic music. It has great power, great structure. I don’t like rock ‘n’ roll, though, or punk. To me, that’s entertainment, not music.

Ansel Adams in his piano studio

While ultimately, music took more of a back seat to photography, studying the piano taught Adams a great deal about developing a disciplined technique, the importance of structure, the necessity of patient and persistent practice and the value of experimentation and finding your own personal voice.

Not surprisingly, the careful training required to be a musician significantly informed Adams’s approach to photography and his photographic vision.

Exposed #18: Cascade

Spoiler Alert! In my 'Exposed' series of articles I reveal some of the secrets behind how I created my images. If you don't want to know how I made 'Cascade' stop reading now!

I always like to challenge myself in my photography. Especially with triptychs, it can be extremely difficult disassembling an image and then reassembling it back together with a completely new concept and vision.

Constructing ‘Cascade’ (and I really do mean ‘constructing’ as it felt like a building project at times) really kicked my creative juices into overdrive!

Paper Trails

I’d been playing with paper in a previous photo shoot – check out the Exposed on ‘Astral Plane’ and ‘Mystique’ – and decided to revisit my colourful selection to see if I could come up with something slightly different. In ‘Astral Plane’ and ‘Mystique’ I’d used a slow, circular motion with the camera, generating very smooth and flowing shapes.

Now I wanted to highlight the more angular and jagged edges of the paper, so moved my camera in a more linear and jerky style.

Original source image for the triptych ‘Cascade’

This is the original, source image for ‘Cascade’. I’d managed to capture a really zigzag, geometric feel and achieved what I was after. However, only the right two thirds of the image were usable (the far left was pretty indistinct and didn’t contain much interest).

Not to be deterred by this limiting factor, I set about deciding how I was going to crop the image to construct my triptych. In the end, I kept the crops pretty straightforward, conservative even. They all ended up being vertical cuts of varying lengths and all in the same area of the photo.

Putting it all Together

What do I do next? I sat at the computer looking at these for a long time. Sometimes I just need a bit of time and space to truly absorb what I’m seeing and allow my subconscious to take hold of and embrace the connections.

The more I looked, the more I started to imagine a series of steps cascading downwards. The challenge then became how to position and orientate the panels so that I could maximise their descent.

I put my construction hat on and got to work. The series of images below present how I put it all together. You can see I only kept one panel in its original orientation and rotated and flipped the other two.

My triptych staircase finally took shape. I thoroughly enjoyed assembling the panels, although I must confess to a degree of bewilderment and indecision at the outset. Ultimately, I’d solved my construction conundrum and could happily cast my eyes up and down my zany, abstract staircase.