I discovered this cool new website (new to me anyway) that posts one awesome photo per day. It’s sponsored by the FWA (Favourite Website Awards), Group94, Boulevart, and Tier 3. So far, there are 3 photos in March that I LOVE, and I wanted to share with you WHY I love them! I’ll start with March 17, “David and Goliath” by California aerial photographer Mark Holtzman.
When I first saw this photo, it was just a WOW moment – the feeling of SCALE left me breathless. The ship in the upper left corner contrasts with the immensity of the tanker, and the fact that the tanker occupies, oh, less than 5% of the space of the photo tells me something about the enormity of the ocean it sits in.
You might have heard the phrase, “FRAME WITHIN A FRAME,” and it applies here. Within the frame of the image, the tanker is perfectly framed by the waves of water created by the passing ship. Were the waves of water not there, this photo wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or special as it is.
This photo isn’t 100% monochromatic, but it almost is, with the exception of the yellow ship, yellow dot on the tanker, and tiny hints of red. The near monochromaticity of the image forces the viewer to focus on the TEXTURE of the water, and the variations in that texture.
Plus, there are LEADING LINES that help the eye move through the frame to its final resting point – from the yellow ship to the tanker. The lines emerge from the yellow ship in the corner of the frame in a V shape, and to the right of the tanker, the lower line of the V transforms into spirals of water that eventually lead the eye to the ship.
The famous photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, coined a phrase called the “decisive moment”:
There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.
This was a DECISIVE MOMENT. Aside from shooting out the window of my commercial airliner, I’ve never done aerial photography. Yet, I can imagine the photographer’s plane must have been moving at a certain speed, while the yellow ship was also speeding towards the left side of the frame. There was a precise moment in time when the yellow ship, tanker, and photographer’s plane were all in just the right locations to achieve the perfect composition.
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