flowers and foliage- black and white Flower in rubble -2

Appreciate your comments on this one.

I could have attached my comment to either one of these two perfectly beautiful flower pictures. Actually, they are much more than that; they are exercises in the selective and dramatic use of light to illuminate a superb composition. For your purposes, I think B&W was the right choice to display the balanced interplay of forms.

Jack:

Thank you so much for your kind encouragement. I was a little worried with all the 4's in the rating, since I was excited about this work.

Pay no attention to the small minds with their fingers on the button. Your work is too good and too original to register with their paint-by-number sensibilities. For many, poetry is something that is written inside a Hallmark greeting card.

Yes! Photography is much more than that. Your own images are evidence of that.

The light is great, the composition and choice of B&W is pleasing. As I often experiment you too have experimented by choosing to contrast nature's perfect beauty* with man made rubble. The former is appealing and in general, rubble is mostly unappealing.

 

 

I suppose if a particular city is bombed and after the bombing 2 boys are attempting to kick a soccer ball amidst burnt out buildings and rubble - for me the rubble adds to that image. I suppose this beautiful flower among rubble can carry many different messages - observe what we are doing to pollute our world  or a perhaps the flower suggests that the fittest will survive given its environment here.

 

When I first viewed  the image and without looking at the title, my eyes kept going to the light colored rubble in the image and depending on your intention, that could be a good or bad thing i.e. being drawn to the rubble at the expense of the flower.

 

If I am being totally honest the rubble bothered me a bit and that is strictly personal taste. Remove the rubble and then the image becomes like many flower photos I have seen. And this is why I find photographing flowers difficult.

There is a theory that the brain reacts positively to form, order, etc. It has been observed in nature that things are ordered mathematically in way to make it appealing to us.

 

*Why is it that the number of petals in a flower is often one of the following numbers: 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 or 55? For example, the lily has three petals, buttercups have five of them, the chicory has 21 of them, the daisy has often 34 or 55 petals, etc. Furthermore, when one observes the heads of sunflowers, one notices two series of curves, one winding in one sense and one in another; the number of spirals not being the same in each sense. Why is the number of spirals in general either 21 and 34, either 34 and 55, either 55 and 89, or 89 and 144? The same for pine cones : why do they have either 8 spirals from one side and 13 from the other, or either 5 spirals from one side and 8 from the other? Finally, why is the number of diagonals of a pineapple also 8 in one direction and 13 in the other?

Are these numbers the product of chance? No! They all belong to the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc. (where each number is obtained from the sum of the two preceding).

 

For what it is worth!

 

 

Dear Tony,

Thank you for the interesting perspective. I knew the significance of Fibonacci numbers, but not in the way you pointed out.

Honestly speaking, when I first encountered this scene, its the dramatic light that caught my attention. I noticed the rubble later. I tried cloning it in photoshop, but ultimately kept it, hoping to initiate a discussion about this choice (which has happened).

This image was initially about interplay between a flower and light, but it turned out to be about contrast between beauty and ugliness, order vs disorder. It is interesting how a small area can change the character of the whole work.

OK