Sunset at Walgren Lake, June 23, 2017

Sunset at Walgren Lake, June 2017. (Photo by Daniel Binkard)

My instinct with shots like this is to try and keep more of the scene in focus. Likely as not I didn’t have a tripod, so my choices were to use a large aperture or a grainy high sensitivity. I’m glad I went with a large aperture. The sharp grass draws the eye to the middle of the frame to explore those shapes. That’s also where the color sits, further keeping the eye centered. But after that, you might find yourself looking around the rest of the frame, exploring the unfocused shapes of the surrounding trees and far shore. I don’t quite like the balance of the far shore cutting through the middle of the grass. Need some lights or something back there. That would be interesting to see!

Tree Leaf Lines, June 17, 2017

Scanograph of an aged leaf, June 2017. (Photo by Daniel Binkard)

A scanograph is an image made with a scanner. It’s similar to a direct exposure in the old darkroom days, when you put objects on the paper and recorded their silhouettes—it’s particularly interesting with semi-solid objects, like water with motion. This leaf is recorded with the overhead lamp in the scanner that’s used for negatives, so the light source that travels with the scanning element isn’t used. The two light sources have different characters and one may look better than the other. I end up with a lovely silhouette of the old leaf and the fibers that trail from the stem. It is framed thusly because these are the dimensions of the scan area when using the overhead lamp. Works for me.