be brave

spin
st martins, new brunswick

We all knew it was going to be quite the week when Freeman Patterson declared “rules are an insult to creativity” and asked us to “be brave enough to think for ourselves” at our very first lecture. In Photographing the World Around You he writes:

The principles he is referring to are balance, dominance, rhythm, and proportion, each of which are covered in the book. We would spend the next six days applying one or more of these principles to the arrangement of the four building blocks to create images that conveyed our message.

In the image above, line and shape are placed within the frame using the principles of rhythm and dominance. It was created using a technique that I’ve used before where you usually set your aperture to force a slower shutter speed of around 1/15 second (in this case I used shutter priority and set it to 1/8 second) then point your camera up into the trees and as you shoot, spin. The results are very unpredictable and no two images are alike.

I was particularly surprised with the reaction to the image which seemed to resonate so much with the workshop participants that, to my chargin, the technique became known as the “Sabrina technique”. When it came time to choosing my contribution to the workshop album and poster, this is the one that was selected. By the way, Andre did a great job on the poster. It looks fabulous and I’ve elected to have it made into a canvas through Artistic Photo Canvas. It should arrive some time next week and I’ll be sure to share my thoughts about the final product here on my blog.