Sailor shadow

It did not look as sport, so it had to be an abstract...

 

Your comments and criticism on this early-morning playing-with-shadow

exercise while sailing are most welcome.

Gotta love shadows. This works well too, with the complex relationship between the different lines and the seams on the sail, and the lines' shadows. Also like the quailty of the light and the upper blue triangle. The angle on the orange handle off teh upper right corner is effective too, and serves as a good anchor for the eye.

Indeed, I waited for the sun and the sail to be at the good angle to have the shadow in that part of the sail. While she is installing a line in the shrouds, it looks like her shadow is on the point of grabbing that orange "handle" (more a piece of plastic tape supposed to act as a tell tale while extended to the back, and miserably folded on itself in this particular case as the sail is not working).

 

The single inter-relation I like the most is that of the only object we see in real and in shadows, that is the foreground line.

Very nicely composed Salvatore. What I really like is the sense of comfort I get from this - the sail is like a safety net, with the wind pressing it against the lines behind imitating the effect of gravity, so we could be looking down at it, and the shadow of the figure shows us that someone is up there hanging in space above us, but all is well because they (through their shadow) are perfectly held in the middle of the "net", and their crossed-leg sitting pose adds to the sense of calm. Nice one!

Salvatore,

 

I've come back to this photo several times and each time it grows on me more. Of course, the shadows are the first thing to catch the eye. The lines and the figure tell the story of a sailor. It's the gentle sunlight on the sail that gives this more than just a documentary mood. It suggests a warm carefree day on the water, (which sounds great after a very long work week). Compositionally, there's a lot going on. The complexity of the composition, created by the shadows and lines is reigned in by the simplicity of the two basic forms created by the sail and sky.

Julie, Laurie, thanks a lot for your analysis of the picture. You know I always appreciate and look forward your opinions, and another time it pleases me a lot to see that the calm feeling of that early morning was conveyed through the shot, and the apparent confusion of lines and shadows. I guess the warm light of the early sun makes the trick, here, giving this message.

 

What you cannot see in the image is the location: straight below the ruins of two greek temples, at Selinunte, in the South coast of Sicily. We had spent the night moored close to the beach, enjoed the full moon, and just fixed a couple of things at sunrise before moving on. Unfortunatly, my 20mm and 50mm lenses were far too short to get any meaningful shot of the temples in the golden light, so you will have to take my word for that.

...looked like this.