In Transit

Image Interpretation

In this image, the viewer sees a very close-up image of the lower half of a human face sporting a wide grin that showcases a full set of fairly straight and very bright teeth. The lips are painted with bright red lipstick--some of which has rubbed off onto some of the teeth--and there is a noticeable bit of food stuck to one of the front teeth. The colors are very bright and vibrant--though what little of the background can be seen is quite dark--and the depth of field is quite shallow.

The first word of interpretation that comes up in my mind for this image is “uncomfortable.” Whether I mean that solely for my own feelings or as applied to the photographed subject as well, I’m not entirely sure. Based on the lipstick and lack of prominent facial hair, I’m assuming that the subject is a woman, since those are culturally feminine traits. The fact that the camera is so close to her face that you can barely see anything else except for the mouth is very discomforting and disconcerting to me. In my personal opinion and in our society as a whole, personal space is something that is normally enforced and something that individuals typically want to protect (with exceptions, of course), but this picture completely shatters that “personal bubble” by zooming right up close to her skin. And being so close even exposes certain flaws that the normal person probably wouldn’t have noticed at a regular distance, say, during a conversation, but those small details are blown up in large proportion because of how the image is framed. However, the subject is smiling, which makes me feel as if she is completely fine with such a situation--or doesn’t know that it’s happening, which adds another layer to the “uncomfortable” interpretation and even adds a (I don’t want to say “sinister” because that feels too strong and dramatic of a word) different angle to a possible backstory for the image. But that almost feels on the verge of trying to dig too deep into a meaning/interpretation to the point of going overboard, so I’ll stop here.

(Also, I’m certain none of these interpretations are biased at all by my own anxieties, surely.)

The Photographer's Eye

Part 1: Frame

I chose this picture because I really like how the curved branches make a more rounded, softer frame inside the frame of the picture itself. Out back garden is full of trees and bushes that my dad has manipulated into swirls and spirals and other shapes/forms that would not occur naturally, and I felt like some of them would make good for photos.

Part 2: Vantage Point

This photo was one that I was torn between posting for Vantage Point or Frame, but I ultimately decided on the former. For all of the other pictures I took for this assignment, I was looking through my glasses at my camera screen as I chose my subjects and judged if I liked how they looked or not. So, I decided, why not switch it around and snap a photo or two from behind my glasses instead?

Part 3: Detail

This is one of my favourite pictures from this assignment. It's actually an aging grape leaf that was folded over itself on my back deck, but when I zoomed in really close to it with a shallow depth of field it almost looked more like leather (or at least some kind of warm-blooded animal skin) and I really thought that was neat. By just zooming in on the details of the veining, it almost doesn't even look like a leaf at all. (And I put it under the Tungsten white balance just because I like that kind of more mysterious vibe that the blue tones give off.)

Part 4: Time

I had fun with this one. The rain was making all of these bubbles pop up on this giant puddle, and I was able to get my shutter speed down quick enough to catch some of the bubbles when they were in the midst of being popped, and I just thought it was cool and interesting to be able to see that part of a process that's too quick for a human eye to really see on its own.

Part 5: The Thing Itself

And, finally, we get to the image that is probably my top favourite from this whole assignment. My legs went numb from crouching so long in front of this Lamb's Ear plant trying to get a good enough picture of the ants that really seemed to love it, but eventually I managed this one of a single ant perched on the point of one of the leaves. He skittered away out of sight in the next instant, but I was still able to capture this one moment when it had paused in the sunlight at the leaftip,