Innocence is the most important trait to have all our life. It keeps us acutely curious about our environment, and gives us HOPE.
The idea
It's while walking in the castle Sforzesco in Milan that I stumbled upon this sight of pure joy.
At first, the ducks caught my attention; I wanted to catch those little feet paddling around in the water, but then, it was the children and their reaction to such a marvelous scene that I wanted to grasp, because it was that pure feeling of awe that I felt at that moment.
In that instance of pure simple joy everything seemed clear, as if no issues in the world could stop these children from having fun.
But, I think what caught my eye the most is the contrast between the first and second girl. This more adventurous girl trying to get so close to the duck she could fall in the pond and the more introverted one protecting herself from the rest. By all means, she would not get too close. It even seems as though she isn't looking at anything. She isn't looking at the ducks roaming around. She doesn't care for that; she finds her interest in the tranquility of the pond maybe.
In addition to that, it's the framing of the adults that is quite relevant here. Only their disembodied legs can be seen. That isn't a product of my specific will, but rather the product of how we interact with our world. It's quite telling of the more hands on approach children take when observing the world, how everything needs to be in their reach for them to experience life. They aren't afraid of getting sick, hurt, or even of failing, they just do because their innocent minds are not yet molded by the productivity induced world we leave in that requires us to produce for the betterment of society, family or our bosses.
Children take the time to appreciate the wonders of our world, something we think we don't have to do because we've already seen ducks, bridges, airplanes, backflips... but how amazing are all these things?! Life should always be a constant discovery of beautiful events, objects and beings, because all of this isn't a given, it's a gift.
The technique
These children were by the side of the pond, so I knelt down to catch a lower angle, more akin to that of their height. This, in order to bring the viewer to the same point of view as them, so as to catch what they caught with their vision of the world.
In an environment such as this one, there were many possibilities as to what I could have done in terms of composition, the first being to make the border of the pond my horizontal symmetry line between the ducks and the children. It would have given a real distinction between the animal and human world. This would have also made for an interesting photo, but would have brought the attention to all the children, not just the one more to the front. It would have worked well if they had a certain symmetry to their poses, or, on the contrary, a dissymmetry. The issue here is that I didn't quite have that, and the viewer wouldn't have known where to look.
That is why a put the border as a guideline to go from the bottom left to the top right of the photo. As said in a previous post, art, in many cases, is about creating a pathway for the viewers eyes to follow. By doing so, I managed to put the more interesting girl in front and create a resting position that was comfortable for the viewer.
Lines are the center pieces of this work. I'll show what I mean with an illustration. But the main idea is to give the audience something they want to look at and they are curious to discover. Directional lines of this piece give the viewer something to chew on.
In orange, I drew the primal lines, the ones the viewer will look at first. The central figure is highlighted in orange. As you can see, the idea is to have a follow up of elements the viewer can discover as they go on looking at the piece. As we walk our eyes upon the border, we stumble across the duck, the child (which we then realize is interacting with the duck) and finally the adult legs blocking our view. This blocking is very important for the photo, because it gives meaning to the contrast between adult and child. It tells the viewer: "Look! The adults in the photo are offsetting the composition, they aren't "welcome"."
In purple, I highlighted the secondary reading of the photo, the elements the viewer will look more closely at a second time around. This isn't an exact science; people may actually look at the girl on the left first, or look at the adults, but, generally, the idea is the one I illustrated: the audience will pose their eyes on the secondary figures that complement the one in the center taking up a bigger space. In addition to that, often are we curious to understand what the subjects in a photo are doing. For example, the second reading of this image tells us that, in reality, the girl in the middle isn't looking at the duck in the near center, but one off to the side, look! We can see its tail!
There is one last read to this, that, even I wasn't really aware of until I did the illustration, and that is the reflections and shadows. Look at the way the children are imaged by the pond. We can see their clear shadows, all three of them. Now look at the adults, it's their distorted reflection that is seen. As if, again, children and adults were distinctly separate, and the pond accepted the children, but not the adults.
Tools
Camera: Canon 1300D
Lens: 18-55 mm
Comments