For this photo, I took a close-up shot of the water fountain in front of the Katzen Center, capturing the “simmering” bubbles in the water pool juxtaposed against the “shimmering” water falling at a certain velocity. Simmer and shimmer are two words that we do not associate with each other but I wanted to play these words against each other in the composition.
The definition of velocity is motion or distance over time. The motion of the plunging vertical water was frozen in time, while the horizontal pool of water was already stagnant in the shot. The shimmering curtain of water ties into the time and motion aspect of the photo. The sun was shining so I wanted to create the effect of ribbons of gold in the cascading water. I adjusted the brilliance level of the light and I increased the contrast. With the term simmer, I immediately thought of bubbling water and the stagnant water was foaming with tiny little air bubbles on the surface.
The struggle with trying to take this photo was trying to get the bubbles to really show up to the right of the picture while I was creating the motion blur on the left. According to Michael Freeman in his book “Photographer’s eye”, “convention suggests that motion blur is a fault, but this very much depends on the effect that the photographer is looking for. As an expressive element, it can work very well, and there are strong arguments against being constantly fixated on sharpness” (p96). I appreciated this idea of relaxing the focus on sharpness so I used a close up that kept the focus on the still water and made the blurring effect of the moving water more noticeable.
Henri Cartier-Bresson said ““inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance.” (p98) I also believe that there are unlimited ways of conveying the elements of time and motion. These are the moments of life.
The link to the reference I used: http://mirror.paramadina.ac.id/pub/linux/doc/book/The%20Photographer’s%20Eye%20-%20Composition%20and%20Design%20for%20Better%20Digital%20Photos.pdf
Here is the original photo that I took:
