The dancing of the clouds around these telecommunication poles struck my eyes as they casted a mist of grey velvet drapes around the subjects of the photo.
Like a couple of friends, these poles seem to be standing next to one another, almost holding hands.
The idea
At the top of a hike near Peille in France I stumbled upon these erected towers that pushed the boundaries of the mountain a little further up, as if trying to reach the sky was their only purpose. Although the hike was enjoyable the whole way, at the top I was met with the sad realization that the clouds had decided I wouldn't be able to enjoy the view and thus take a picture of the environing setting. So I started looking around, seeing what I could photograph. The clouds became more prominent, and thus my sight narrower. As I was standing alone there, I felt the loneliness of the place and my fragility became even more apparent. My eyes reached for subjects that were closer to me. My blessing came when I stumbled upon this group of telecommunication towers. I tried taking many various angles of the subjects, but this one was the one that called out the most to me.
The fact that the grey drapes masks some of the towers, preventing you from truly seeing where they can reach up to, was very interesting for me. The notion that the rest of the subject is left in the hidden, that you have to imagine it, or that it purposefully hid from the spectator, is an appealing composition trope to me, since it opens up a relationship, or rather a discussion, between the subject and the audience. The subject has a reason to hide, and the audience has an appeal to take a peak and understand. In this case, nature was the culprit hiding the subjects, which tells another story, and helps give some mystery, some curiosity to the composition.
I talked about loneliness, and when I knelt down to get this angle, the one thing I had in mind was to express, throughout my photo, the feeling of loneliness I felt when I was up there by myself. Although, here, these very unemotional inanimate objects are, in reality not that lonely, they have one another. But they are distant, far from reach, the foreground creates a distance between me, you, and the rest of the picture.
The technique
Composition wise, there are some subtle notions of photography.
The first two, which are rather basic but very important, is the 1/3 rule, and the lines guiding the audience.
Here, it is clear to see how the 1/3 rule is respected thanks to the illustration below :
The two green lines created by my subjects draw vertical lines cutting the picture in 3 almost equal parts;
The foreground, the purple horizontal line closer to the bottom, passes through the 1/3 mark, giving space for the subjects on 2/3 of the rest of the photo.
If I focus on the lines: notice the unbendable nature of poles. Now then, why did I go put two lines in the middle that cross the poles and break that static erected nature they have? They are not even horizontal, and barely respect the 1/3 rule (regardless of what I said before). Simply because: what is a photo without its imperfections? I looked for a story to tell with my environment, and the braided metallic rope holding the pole near me out of frame helped cut the image I had in front of me. It helped "cut" the poles and their immaculacy. It gave the composition an interesting factor, which, otherwise, would have been dull. Further, it accentuates the slanted aspect of the foreground line, giving more weight to the strangeness of the composition.
Finally, I used the foreground and background to make this photo more appealing by separating them through saturation. I desaturated the background and saturated the foreground: pushing out the colors of the foreground, while making the colors of the background more dull, accentuating the "hidden" nature of these poles. Often used to push forward a subject, in this case it helped accentuate the power of the composition. If you look at this picture from afar, or by squinting, you can't make out anything but the background and foreground, thus simplifying the composition.
Tools
Camera: Canon 1300D
Lens: 18-55 mm
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