Isolating or pairing?

Published on by Laura Bloomsbury

“Do you know me, air, so full of scenes once mine?
You, once the smooth rind,
margin and leaf of my words.”
Breathing, You Invisible Poem! ~ Rilke

Isolating backgrounds with narrow depth of field draws the subject in – it’s clearly saying: ‘Look! And why not, it’s Autumn and there is such a plethora of landscape colours that focusing down and in on particular aspects of foliage is another way of admiring what’s there. One disadvantage is that it also requires a certain amount of pin sharp focus, which is not easy on a breezy afternoon here in the park, without a tripod!

Thus it is that the background space is viewed as blank, negative, or white since it does not draw any attention other than as a subliminal presence or breathing space. Air is one such obvious background but better still is water – a liquid wall on which to hang some subjects

There are times though when white space is actually more a companion piece rather than a subliminal presence and hence I’ve picked some watery shadows that link up in some way with the black space. It’s more like the unity of yin/yang.

Captions: pasted on; bark; wavy ;

White Space Wednesdays – making the most of negative space!

13 thoughts on “Isolating or pairing?”

      1. Thanks! Good to know it doesn’t kill the tree. And hopefully, it is also food for birds. I never see lots of those leave here, which is why I always stop to look at them. So whatever species eats our tree leaves must fit well into the ecosystem.

    1. many thank David as I struggle a bit with the electronic view finder (the LCD screen stopped working after an accident with a leaking water bottle)

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