This first exercise asks us to sketch a landscape, but as I suck at drawing (one good reason for using a camera), and as the point of the exercise is to examine assumptions about landscapes, I thought I’d discuss one of my recent images.
The shape of the picture is rectangular. The camera is at head-height, perpendicular to a road. A pole is positioned in the vertical center bisecting the image. There are five horizontal bands, from bottom to top: sand, road, sand, buildings/vehicles, sky. The top and bottom bands are approximately equal height and a similar blue-gray. The evenly spaced bands and the center pole form a cross and thereby four smaller rectangles. Three other poles and two palm trees serve as vertical counterpoint and produce symmetry. The diminishing size of the poles and trees as they appear at greater distance from the camera provide evidence of perspective. There is one bit of movement, a person striding down the road to the left of the center pole, his movement complimented to the right by a left-leaning pole and a frondless palm tree. As for mood, I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not warm or lively or inviting; more clinical, perhaps. It relies more on form than content.
The exercise also calls for some discussion of why I have enrolled on this course and what I hope to learn. Some of the background to this has been discussed in a previous post, so I’ll move right on to answer the questions. I’m doing Landscape because it seems to fit best the kind of work I’m doing now, though I suppose that work could be framed as well as documentary. I’m less interested right now in working with people, which would be required of documentary, and even less interested in spending all my time on the computer for Digital Image & Culture. Landscape allows me the opportunity to get out and explore, which is just what I need right now and of which I can take good advantage during this most temperate of seasons in the UAE.
As for what I hope to get out of the course, I’m not really sure. Perhaps a better perspective on my work and an excuse to travel farther afield to do so.
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