(Photographer as Sculptor)
Student's Thoughts while on assignment:
Here are my light-chasing photos.
Dark pumpkins was taken at night. I found a yard that had lots of Halloween decorations and took this shot. I have no idea why this shot turned out as it did. It was all an accident.
Corn is my daytime shot. I took this at sunset and the light was a wonderful golden color.
Brushes is my interior shot. I liked the pattern and texture of these brushes all lined up. I was hoping to get the handles on the brushes a bit darker and more dramatic. Perhaps I would have had better results if I’d changed the exposure? I was working so hard to get the light, I think I lost a bit of the dark and the drama.
Dark Pumpkins
The spirit of Hallow's Eve was in you perhaps? Proves a favorite point of mine that often the ABSTRACTION is the REPRESENTATION. No doubt in my mind that if you laid the camera up on a tripod and made a perfectly focused/steady shot you wouldn't have half the drama, creepiness, ghoulishness, and transformative power. It actually reminds me a bit of lithography in its sensations of softly inked paper. There is remarkable light that emanates from within the character of the decapitated head. I remain a touch distracted by the similar forms at the bottom and feel they detract from the spell you conjured. Block out those shapes with your hand and see the single head floating on black night and I feel it gets stronger, scarier. It doesn't reveal its truer plastic-lawn-decoration self.
Corn
We had a nice discussion this week about this image and I find it very successful for many reasons. 1) using color in a monochromatic way is very rich. 2) composition is well cared for and moves our eye in effortless, circular ways. 3) texture is showcased in myriad ways and 4) a lovely soft delicate moment of light. Nice work. With the image I have on screen (and may not be the case with original) I can't discern an actual focus on any of the objects. Is your original soft from camera movement (slow shutter in late day light)? A cracking, contrasty, sharp detail on that foreground corn might really shoot this one into the stratosphere.
Brushes
Although the image feels like it has a lot of movement or cascades, it stands fairly static. It is nice to see you conjure up past lessons (texture and patterns) and put them to use. I imagine many different arrangements that might have breathed some more dynamism into the composition. Your obtuse angle (and/or rotated image) keeps the viewer on the outside. Here, unlike "Corn" above, the eye can't really circulate and tends to park itself on the brush directly in the center. How might a single silver brush played against two or three gold brushes work? What about a different kind of stagger besides a uniform one? As for the exposure, you can definitely tell me why your meter did this? We have an all black scene (nearly) and the camera says what regarding exposure?
Final thoughts:
Other than the exposure snafu, I really like the set of images. More help with composition is coming and some of those new tools will help you finesse out all the possibilities in your scenes. "Corn" really points the way for the future!