Project 1b Results: The power of shape

Ooookay, I've got to get moving faster than this if I'm going to get 71 projects done in under a year. But maybe a year is an unreasonable goal, I dunno... I'll reevaluate that later on.

The goal of this assignment was to create an image in which the primary element is "shape." This is a path in the main park in Hesston, KS, just down the road from where I work. It was 23 degrees and breezy, so I braved the elements for just fifteen minutes when I noticed the paths in the park from the road... with the weird sleet/freezing-rain/snow thing we had recently, followed by three days of below-freezing, sunny weather, we ended up with perfectly smooth ice on the paths, but clearing spots in the grass, creating a kind of reverse effect of how snow normally melts. The path stood out, and I looked for one with a pleasing shape. I think this one works.

Project thoughts: I really stewed on this one for a long time, probably making it a lot harder than necessary. With only "shape is the dominant element" to guide me, that's a pretty blank canvas. I kept forgetting that Hedgecoe's examples had a lot of non-shape elements... I'm tempted to say that he didn't have much in his portfolio in which shape was really the dominant theme. In his examples, he had to explain why the other elements weren't crowding out "shape" as the most prominent. I kept eliminating ideas because the real interest came from things like repetition of shape or pattern. I think I was too narrow in my interpretation for most of the week.

When given a blank canvas, my mind goes blank, and I had a lot of trouble coming up with something that wasn't just a shape... something at least remotely artistic. With the cold and snow, I wasn't inclined to shoot outside, but I really wasn't coming up with anything inside either (not to mention that we're moving stuff around in the house and there's not much room).

What did I learn from this assignment? Get shooting. I spent far too much time wondering what I might shoot and not enough time shooting. Some of that was just a time issue... with 9-hour days and a 1.5-hour commute, I just don't have that much time, let alone daylight, to shoot during the week right now. The other thing I learned was not to interpret the assignments too narrowly... that choosing one element to dominate doesn't mean having to exclude the other elements.

I'm glad to have that behind me and am looking forward to Project 2, where the assignments start to become more complex.