A Rain of Frogs

Last time I explored the concept of balance, which is one of the more encompassing principles of composition. A designer can control the emotional impact of a piece by creatively using (or abusing) balance.

This post will be a short exploration of proportion. Proportion is a much smaller topic than balance in terms of scope, but it is still one of the more important principles of composition.

Proportion is all about scale, about large objects and small objects. Most people raised in western society learned at a relatively young age that a sense of depth, or distance, could be created by making objects closer to the viewer larger, and those more distant objects smaller. By using proportion in this way, a composition can be given a sense of depth. In eastern cultures, a sense of depth is conveyed by placement – the closer an element is to the top of a composition, the closer the audience perceives it to be. And it will be perceived to be further away if it is closer to the bottom of the composition.

In conjunction with depth and distance, proportion gives us another important attribute that can be used to clarify a message. Not only are larger objects perceived as closer, they are also more dominant than other objects. It seems obvious, but the closer something is, the more important it seems. Conversely, smaller objects can appear further away, and thus are perceived as subordinate to larger objects.

This dominance and subordination allows the designer to create a visual order out of an otherwise potentially chaotic composition. More important elements can be made more dominant by making them larger, while less important information can be subordinated by making it smaller. As with balance, composition can make use of dominance and subordination to create a sense of chaos.

And like balance, proportion can be used to enhance the emotional qualities of the piece. Larger images are more evocative and emotionally powerful, especially when the proportion not natural (arge man looming over a small woman to create more of a sense of fear, or a large woman conquering a smaller corporate world to reinforce a strong female message).

Manipulating order and chaos, and the dominance and subordination of culturally powerful imagery (guns, babies and religious symbols are all examples of culturally loaded imagery) can create a jarring emotional impact to reinforce a message. These same properties can be used to render the piece emotionally flat, if required.

A strong understanding of proportion and how it can be used to to modify the message or purpose of content, can add depth and order (or disorder) to composition.

The grass is greening, the trees are budding and the air is fresh and warm. Birds are singing and the Sens are choking in the playoffs again. Is there any better time of year than spring?

My father is putting his new, bigger boat in the water today. It should be already floating. On Sunday, we went down to the marina to take a look at the boat, which we had seen only in pictures. It’s really big. I am looking forward to seeing how she handles the water. As I mentioned in my last post, I dont’ have a boat to prepare for the water, so I was missing the marina experience a bit. After inspecting my Dad’s boat (big!) we walked around the marina a bit to look at other boats.

It was an interesting experience. I felt nostalgia and a sense of loss that I don’t have the boat this year, but I also felt a bit of relief. I won’t have to feel like I have to spend my weekends down at the marina in order to ‘maximize’ my investment in sailing. It’s liberating. Instead I can concentrate on enjoying other aspects of summer ( a serious return to cycling comes to mind, as does camping) and engaging in a bit of travel – something I haven’t done in decades.

I’m really looking forward to that.

This is a picture I took from the deck of one of the two sailboats I have owned.

This spring has been odd for me for many reasons, but for the longest time I have felt something was awry, a barely perceptible itch I didn’t really realize I had to scratch until I actually put my finger on it.

This is the first spring in many years I have not had a sailboat. The first spring in years I have not spent getting a boat ready to launch. I didn’t realize how much I would miss the manual labour involved in preparing a boat to be put back in the water after a long winter.

There is something very cathartic about the process. It’s like washing away winter and ushering in the spring. Not having that experience this year has been eye-opening.

Thankfully I have found other ways to wash the winter away. Getting out on my bicycle was helpful, as was repairing the brakes on my ancient Golf, which spent a large part of the winter sitting behind the house buried in snow. Even the simple act of putting away the winter coat helped. The amazing weather lately certainly hasn’t hurt the cause.

I still miss the boat, but I know there’s another in my future.

Sarah bought me some acrylic paint for my birthday. I am so excited!

From up here, the town is a gently undulating sea of rusty red terracotta roofs. Beneath them, small white houses coddle charmingly narrow, winding cobblestone streets. Behind me, I can hear the call of wheeling gulls as they scour the waterfront for their daily bread. All around me is the white noise of life, of bicycle bells and talking.

The effect is breathtaking, the view to die for. The sun has just touched the mountains in the distance, and the sky is fading from rich blue to the dusty golden of sunset.

After a deep breath, I tear my eyes from this wonderland and look through the eyepiece before me. Through it I see a small cobblestoned square, barely a wide place in the constricted laneway. But it is wide enough to house a few tables belonging to a cafe I know serves the best coffee in town.

At one of the tables sits a beautiful young woman. She is dressed casually, in a light sun dress. Her reddish brown hair is held back from her face by the sunglasses she has just tucked up behind her ears. Her smile is radiant, and her blue eyes sparkle when she laughs.

The reason she’s laughing is the impeccably dressed young man sitting across the table from her. Not that he matters. He is merely a detail that brings me up here. It is not him sitting down there at the cafe that matters, it is that she is sitting with him. Only she matters.

A sudden thrill runs through my body, the same one I always get when I sight my mark through this lens. The rush of incredibly power, the feeling of holding someone’s life in my hands. A simple twitch of a finger, and her life is over.

But this time there is something else as well. A debate rages in me, one that’s always been there but has until now been hidden away behind closed doors in a corner of my mind. I am surprised by it, having never before allowed the thought to surface.

One voice compels me to take the shot, to finish it and move on. Another begs me to spare her. The debate wheels on and on, round and round, and I stand immobile, watching this beautiful young woman laugh and move like poetry under the crosshairs.

I could just pack up my equipment and go away. Leave her to her happiness. Who am I to take that away from her?

I am a professional, I shouldn’t have thoughts like this. I was hired to do a job, and I should do it. That is all it is. A job.

Our lives – hers and mine – teeter on the edge. The world holds its breath. I feel as if a great weight is about to shift one way or the other, as if the fate of worlds hangs in the balance.

You’ve done it a hundred times before, says the first.

But not one hundred and one, says the second.

And I am surprised to find this is my voice, that I have spoken aloud. I relax my hands, and step away from the edge. The world exhales. I look down at my equipment, suddenly aware of how I’ve taken this tool of expression and turned it into something unclean.

Slowly, with shaking hands, I remove the camera from its tripod, and pack it away in my camera bag.