Category: Plant Portrait

This was not originally written to appear in this blog. However, I realize that my thoughts about photography are taking a turn that would appear less intelligible without this short description. I thus translated it to appear here. The original text is also available.

Speaking of ‘an eye for photography’ I understand that the photographer sees the world as a reservoir of potential pictures and that he will do everything he can in order to make the best of this potential.

Maybe he will find a picture remembering Andreas Feininger once said that everything worth being photographed is worth being photographed a couple of times. Such repeated scrutiny of a subject may take place at very different times of the day, or the year. It so allows for numerous variations of a theme.

Once you start producing variations your perspective may widen, from a particular lake to water in general, from this one flower to constellations of flowers and leaves (and finally to plants ‘as such’).

Meanwhile, it is interesting to observe how the picture changes when you omit colour. This omission does not produce a lack, but rather emphasizes the structures of the subject which will now appear more clearly. Black-and-white also seems to imply a relation to the graphic arts (such as etchings or woodcuts).

You may try to push abstraction still further. In doing so, you might not aim at the kind of clarity you seek when involved with documentation, being satisfied only when you present yet more aspects and more details – but rather at a greater clarity that allows the picture to stand for itself, independently of whatever it might depict.