Sunday 23 September 2007

SNAPPING AT PERFECTION

Ever since I had my very first camera (at the age of 7) I have sought for that elusive creature, the perfect picture. In the days of film (on reel and on cartridge), I would shoot off hundreds of images only to be largely disappointed when I surveyed the results in the dozens of packets collected from Boots the Cash Chemist.

Digital photography made it easier (or at least less expensive) to wantonly point the camer and click. And yet, 'the perfect picture' - in terms both of subject and composition - is still amazingly hard to entrap!

If, once in a while, I get even vaguely close I am inordinantly pleased and from this year's thousand-or-so photographs taken in Greece, here is one with which I am particularly satisfied...

Click on image to enlarge

I like the placing of the body in the landscape (this was camera compostion, not created by subsequent cropping); and I love the soft early morning light on the mountains in the background, the mirror-calm of the sea, the glimpse of seaweed and stones beneath the water, and the ripples of light and shadow on the sun-warm body.

Of course, it isn't perfect...

I took this other picture (in portrait) with the bather's face more in profile and this would have been a much better pose for the figure in the landscape version...


Oh, well... Next time!

Images: © Brian Sibley 2007

[My grateful thanks to David for permission to publish these images]

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really, Brian! Do you think we're going to be fooled! Are you quite sure you were after the LANDSCAPE! Pull the other one!

Brian Sibley said...

What an appaling (and totally unjustified!) reputation I have!

Seriously -- AND YOU CAN STOP THAT SNIGGERING IN THE BACK ROW, MASTER BOLL WEAVIL! -- I really was trying to compose a photograph that combined the human figure with elements of landscape.

Now, if Annie Leibovitz had taken this shot, no one would have accused her doing anything other than pursuing her art...

What an unjust world this is!! ;-)

SharonM said...

You'd think, going to Greece for a month, that David would have remembered to pack a pair of swimming shorts.
Nice pic.

Anonymous said...

And to top it all, I got a certain satisfaction seeing that I was the first person to "get in there"!
Aren't I awful!!!

Boll Weavil said...

That's alright then - as long as its art. I thought it was you just doing another dirty picture.Can we have a caption competition for this as well. No on second thoughts we better not.They might be rather rude and it might involve David having to be a bit more broadminded and turning the other cheek.

Brian Sibley said...

ANDY'S MUM - Great picture!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing your Muse with us - you must have made the Gods happy that day.
Beautiful evocative shots.