#NpMonthlyWord – Autumn
Here we are again at the beginning of a new month so as is becoming customary I’m looking back over the #NpMonthlyWord for November, reminder that word was “Autumn”
I started out a little different here by using a starting point of google image research to see what the word encompassed visually. The most striking thing is that most of the images were incredibly literal and somewhat cliched, most show brown leaves and/or derivatives of that to form the images. On closer inspection I think some were created by various ai software, which is a new/frightening/interesting development in ideas/relations for stock photography going forward, people will do so much to avoid paying for images won’t they! Anyway enough of that last point, as it’s nearing the festive period, I’ll save the rants for the new year.
Here are the submissions for the #NpMonthlyWord where I’ve based them all around the theme of the brown leaves as the representation of the word autumn.
Image 1 is of my starting point I thought about how the sunlight catches the light through the trees and maybe a bit of movement caught by flash blur but then realised that was incredibly close to my March submission so held off and captured this instead, the sky was so beautiful that day.
Image 2-5 again is a set of images, that’s becoming a theme but this one is representational of an old lesson in editorial/stock photography. Mainly about framing and construction of options. I remember being told by newspaper what sort of shape they had for the article and that the picture must fit that. This is a lesson in providing those options, I observed this beautiful singular leaf in the grass so decide to try 4 options to see which one worked best, but of course that answer is a subjective in the world of object/subject thoughts.
Image 6 is again working on the ideas of stock cliches with the last leaf on the tree but trying something different, pushing a boundary, making something different but alas no it has come out exactly the same and quite boring, don’t you think?
Images 7/8/9 are all of single leaves in different settings, think some work and some don’t, especially the depth of field on number 9 it’s off and slightly wrong, think the ingredients for images 7 and 8 work ok on paper but in their actuality, there is something awry, especially for the stock market.
Image 10 is one I like and different from the previous three, I think it’s the light, composition and DoF that make it best, it’s unstructured in many ways but one I feel could work in a stock setting, maybe even as a print but definitely one that could work for a annual report.
The last two images, Image 11 (and 12 with detail) are a bit of an interesting one, what could have made that shape? I’m thinking small unicorn running free and accidentally tears through a large leaf, yes? If you can’t imagine fun then what can you do?
There we have it, the winner in my eyes is this one:
Winning image here.
The leaf pointing upwards, I like its naturalness and construction, what do you think?
How did you do?
Now as we’ve discussed images, I leave you with a quote to balance the books, this from David Bates new book, Photography after Postmodernism:
“What they all share (with different techniques of course closed bracket is ‘awesome’ description, the effect of those anecdotal descriptions is primarily to evince reality through the photographic surface of ‘here it is’ and ‘this is how it is’”
For me this also feeds into the current ideas of keywording as well as captioning especially in the seemingly mystifying art of searching for images via web browsers and in particular, how people search for what they want, possibly I’ve simplified this but that’s a NathanPhoto take.
As ever thank you for reading and if you have any comments, feedback, thoughts or anything then please get me through the usual channels.
Thank you.