Looking out to sea

The winter league in Dublin Camera Club is about to kick off and last night saw the deadline for entries for the first of five months of competition before the finals in March.  This will be my second year competing, and I really enjoyed the competition last year.  It helped that I won my grade in the colour and monochrome print leagues, but this year the resultant promotion to the next grade will make things more challenging, but also more interesting.

As is my policy, I entered the maximum 6 images allowed last night – two colour prints, two monochrome prints and two JPEGs for projection.  All six have been featured on the blog, and one I was sure to enter was “Walking In Sunshine”, which I posted this day last week, and which has received lots of positive feedback.   Outside of the camera club, that image has the potential to be my most successful to date.  Firstly, it received the honour of “Tweet of the Day” on the Irish photo-sharing website pix.ie, where I re-post images from the blog daily.  Secondly, having entered it in the Digital Camera magazine’s Photographer of the Year 2009 competition, I was pleased to be asked by the judges drawing up the shortlist to submit a high resolution version of it as it was being considered, effectively meaning it has at least made the long list.

So it seems people like that image, which is great. I’ll know in three weeks time if the judge for the October round of the DCC winter league likes it too.

I think the reason that image works well is due to it’s simplicity – all colour and even all tone is removed from the shot and you are left with just shape, but the shapes that are present capture movement and a moment in time in such a way that the picture tells a story that doesn’t need colour or tone.  As I wrote when I posted the image, much of the creation of it was due to luck – particularly being lucky with the timing of the capture relative to the movement of the people, although I happily take credit for filling what was an empty part of the frame with the birds which help complete the composition.

It set me thinking as to whether removing colour and tone from an otherwise poor image can rescue it and create something new, and I experimented with the photo you see above.

This shot was taken near Enniscrone in Sligo a few years ago, with the same group of friends who would later battle each other to move this rock.  The image from the camera is poor – the light was difficult, their backs are to the camera and it’s just not an interesting picture.   Last night as an experiment I applied much the same processing to the shot as I did for the silhouette mentioned above.  The results aren’t as clean, and I don’t think it rescues the shot, but it’s interesting to see how it changes the shot.   I haven’t been as successful in removing tone in this shot because, unlike the other one, it wasn’t shot with that silhouette look in mind.  But then this allows the water to be still represented in the final image, which is probably good.

Whatever way you look at it, I don’t think this makes for a strong image, but it is quite graphic.  If you have any thoughts on this shot, or how it compares to the “Walking In Sunshine” shot, I’d be interested to hear them in the comments.