Doctor Who, Blink (2007)
A couple more from General Cemetery, these two are about the last of my "keeps" from the day. I opted to go with monochrome for both images, to give a darker mood, as in my opinion, statues in graveyards, especially ones in western society, should not be bright and colourful. This opinion is also not helped by the fact that statues in graveyards never look happy, and never have much in the way of colour associated with them.
First off, number one, my least favourite of the two.
Photo by Alex Earle, all rights reserved
I like how a proportion of the statue stands out against the very plain background of the sky, as it was cloudless day when I shot these. The row of gravestones add interested, without drawing focus away from the statue, which in itself can easily be seen as another gravestone as opposed to a dedicated statue. The depth of field very smooth and subtle, especially when it comes to the tree in the background which helps to break up what would otherwise be a very plain, boring skyline.
However, despite the fact that I have played with the contrast and shadows the image still seems rather flat and there isnt much else of interest in the photo other than the statue. This image, to me, just isnt wildly exciting and lacks a certain amount of mood for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on. It is this lack of mood that makes this my least favourite photo out of the two that will be in this post. I may have to go back to the original and spend some time in photoshop improving on this photo and to hopefully add more mood.
Talking of mood, here is the second image, which has proven be the bigger hit out of the cemetery set amongst the people who have seen my shots;
Photo by Alex Earle, all rights reserved
The mournful look of the statue, especially with the weathering, coupled with the monochrome conversion provide a deep sorrowful mood. I particularly enjoy the way I composed this photo (as some have suggested, it has not actually been cropped in PP), the focus of the photo fills the vast majority of the frame but leaves enough room for the gravestones in the background to be easily visible. I opted to not include anymore of the statue, as below the point where the statue is cut off by the edge of the frame, there wasn't much to see other than a boring plinth, and I believe such a boring plinth may have detracted from the overall impact of the photo. The tree breaks up the background quite nicely, so there are no large, clear, and otherwise boring patches of sky, yet it doesn't distract you from the main focus of the statue due to the depth of field. The same applies to the gravestones in the background, they are a secondary interest but due to the depth of field they are not distracting.
Otherwise, there is not much I can see in this photo that I do not like. There is nothing that stands out to me as being undesirable. However, on the photography forum I used, I did share this image and one person came back to me with the follow;
"No3 is the best but you cropped the feet and its a bit flat IMO add more contrast (in fact a lot may add more mood) and try a film grain texture"
I really appreciated this comment, as it was constructive and gave me another perspective to view the photo from. So, I will be looking into this comment further in my next post, and posting the end result once I have taken onboard and acted upon this comment.
Quite a long post...I shouldn't waffle so much.
Have a nice day :)
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