Balance (by me)

This is a image taken for a American University Visual Literacy Class

Last week in my Visual Literacy class I was given the task to take a picture of something that is derived, motivated, or communicates balance. At first I had no idea what I should do and how I would go about communicating balance. So, in order to gain some ideas, I went onto flickr.com a photo sharing website and found this picture of a little cardboard character balancing on a chain. This immediately set my mind going as to what I could do. At first I thought that I would attempt to make a 3D character such as the one in this picture. However, after I completed my version of the character, I realized that it created boring pictures that weren’t compelling. So, I went with plan B that you see above.

In the above picture there is a stick man who is often seen on no running signs carrying a umbrella. This character appears to be walking slowly across the log that is spanning a small stream. If you look at the photo which was referenced in the first paragraph you can see exactly where the inspiration for this picture came from. However, the idea of having the picture in black and white came completely by accident. While I was playing with some of the manual settings I accidentally switched to black and which mode and after see this I decided to take just a few shots for fun. As it turns out the black and white pictures looked better than the color ones so I decided to stick with it.

What I like about this picture is that by using black and white the colors of the natural objects (rocks, log, water, ect.) work together with the colors of the unnatural object (the paper man) and balance each other out while still remaining two separate entities. Another aspect of this picture that I like is how balance is shown in the natural objects. For instance, there are sticks in the stream as well as leaves that are not only in the stream but on the edges of it as well. This shows that the stream is in a natural state which without any human intervention would be balanced with the rest of nature.

What I don’t like about this picture though is how on the right of the running character there is a white edge. I don’t like this because it highlights the character more which defeats part of the purpose of this picture with is the balance of both the man and nature. This was caused by the Adobe Photoshop filter that was used to create the character before he was printed out and put on the log. Another small aspect about the photo that I don’t like is how the log is still out of focus even though the character is on it. While it may be a very small detail it is the one part of this picture that bugs me.