Blog 21 05 21 VerticalsVerticals.An exercise in experimental composition

This was an exercise in experimental composition. I am generally respectful of the “rule of thirds” and other helpful concepts for artistic composition, but on this occasion I jettisoned eons of art history to try out a purely vertical layout. Using an ugly street lamp as the principal point of interest, framed by boring skyscrapers and allowing a construction crane and the Tour Montparnasse to compete with the Eiffel Tower, I took the risk of creating an unhappy visual jumble.

That said, it did not work well in the original colour treatment, so that Black & White conversion was needed to take out one dimension, so to speak, and create a more graphic effect focussed purely on the shapes. Luckily the sky was free of large cloud formations, which would also have detracted from the sobriety of the image, in my estimation.

The image does “read” left to right, I think, due to the height of the building on the left, the lamp and the building on the right, with the eye then travelling from right to left along the foot of the image and coming to rest on the details of the distant structures. The fact that one of them is the Eiffel tower is a kind of full stop for the meaning of the photograph.  

It works for me. What about you?

Settings

Camera: Nikon D300

Lens: Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D

Focal Length: 60mm

Drive Mode: Continuous

Auto Focus-Area Mode: Single

Aperture: f/13

Shutter Speed: 1/1600s

Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority A/E

Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV

Metering: Pattern

ISO Sensitivity: 800

Hand held

Format: Raw

Place : Esplanade de la Defense, Courbevoie/Puteaux.

Year: 2010

Copyright Paul Grayson 2021 All Rights Reserved