Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year indeed! I do hope one and all managed to have a safe and fun celebration of the birth of a new year...
Well it is now 2008 and I am finding some great subject matter for some of 'my' more creative type of photography. This tends to be slightly a little more out of the box, I guess you could say.

Recently my husband and I took part (like most I imagine) in a local fireworks display for New Years. What I mean by taking part is we watched the fireworks as well as I took pictures of said fire works as you can see to the left.
I've been noticing in things that I have been photographing lately that I've been attracted to subjects with a large amount of texture. It's almost like the subject of texture just jumped up and said pay attention to me.
So I will ask the question - what exactly is texture when it comes to photography? Texture is defined by the 'Oxford Canadian Dictionary' this way: "the representation of the tactile quality and nature of a surface in a photograph, painting, etc". So now we ask the question - How does one 'show' texture that you cant feel? This is were the art comes in. You see for photographic work, or sketching or even painting texture is represented in few a ways at least. We will start with the following: composition, lines, and depth as there are so many attributes to go through all at once. Not to mention that they are all equally important to great pieces of art. Let's go through these together to start with.

COMPOSITION

Composition is the overall placement and look of your subjects final product. This is easier to see so let's take a look at a couple examples. As you are able to see this is an example of poor composition. It is poor because of the placement of the subject on the 'canvas'. As one of my instructors would say this picture does not capture your attention because the flower placement is on the far left. What else is there to see? Our next example of the same flower show a bit better placement. You will notice that placement helps direct your eyes where to go. Basically just follow the lines. This brings us to our next point on how to 'show' texture.

LINES
Lines come in many different ways. There are the traditional physical lines that you can see and then there are the lines that are implied. Let's take a look. Here we can see more of the physical line I was speaking of. The palm leaves show this very well. Our eyes start at the bottom and travel all the way up to the top of the picture. The other reason our eyes will do that with this type of example is that the bottom starts off on the wide/broad side of things and then tapers as you follow. Kind of like when you look off in the distance on the high way. Our next example shows an implied line. Basically what that is, is an imaginary line that helps to direct the eye through the whole picture. Like our orchid to the right. The second flower behind the main flower helps keep the eyes moving in the picture, as it is slightly off to the side. It isn't a real line but it is definitely implied and give the picture some depth.

DEPTH:

Depth is what give the photo life. I guess you could say makes it look 3D instead of being as flat as the paper it was printed on. You see depth is all of the above plus having layers to give the complete look. I tend to find the 'flat' picture in some portraits like my friend to the left here. Even though by looking at him you know that he is not one dimension, he looks like it in the picture because it was taken strait on. (like your pass port picture if you will). So how do we make him look like he truly is? We give the picture depth and dimension through that depth. Take a peek at the next photo. In portraits of people or animals you need angles to give you depth. It doesn't need to be huge just enough to give you the idea that there is more to the subject than meets the eye at first glimpse.

So now when you pull all of these elements plus more (you guessed it this is just the tip of the ice berg on this topic) you will be able to create some wonderful examples of art.

Here is one last example of what can happen when you try to put everything together...
Can you guess what else gives texture to a picture?

The answer next time.... until then happy shooting and here's to the New Year of possibilities!