Auguest 2012 - THIS week's PICTURE
Fairground series : Joiner photographs by Malcolm Aslett
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Here is a series of five of the same scene, beginning with a 'finished' photo in black and white. Without the colour it does help in concentrating on the basic forms and the composition of parts I feel. The blue of a sky and the green of a landscape can sometimes overpower an event. I suspect that black and white means we search a picture more acutely as there is less we can take for granted. So, a spinning wheel reaching up into the sky and a young boy glances over as he walks by... |
he Granted, there is not much separating these pictures. I used a different colour channel in each of them to vary the tone and found this one slightly harsher because of the increased contrast... | With the colour reinstated new things start to attract our eye. The 'ENTER' sign is suddenly visible, after being virtually removed by the missing colour channel. Also, we start banding elements as the greens, reds and blues become insistent... | Before the colours were punched up I also moved the boy over so he wasn't crowded into the machine. I really don't know why I don't to this more often. I've often puzzled over an artist's sketch for a painting which shows this very thing, where a figure's positioning or gesture is ever so slightly changed and yet we begin to see one as 'right' and one as 'wrrong' - I'm never sure if this is solid evidence of the artist's instincts or a matter of us simply preferring what is familar to us. You can make your own mind up on this one.... | And finally how it all started. The sky was no where near as busy but tonal differences determined the initial clouds being drawn in. As this allowed for emphasis of the star in the sky image of the ride I was happy to do it. Not all the original photos are included here but there were gaps to be filled by whatever means I could think of. The turning cages meant that items didn't automatically fit together anyway. These all make me think I haven't broken through the barrier yet. I have to think a bit harder about how these things should be tackled. One useful thing I did discover: the complicated struts of the main ride were much easier to clean up when I chose a single channel in the RGB layers of Photoshop.... |
