Size Matters

Or at least it does to me these days. Its about exploring shapes and sizes comparing man to nature. Who knows where this theme came from but it has been fun exploring on both levels.

An interesting theme of late is returning to a few of my older themes. Back in my college days there was the whole "full frame" shooters going on in the fine art side of the photo department. Even though I was a "commercial" track student I still enjoyed what they were doing and used it for myself.

Essentially the only rule this group worked on was that the whole frame from your negative had to be printed. It forced you into clean compositions. No cropping was allowed...ever. Several of my friends were very involved in the "full frame society" which was an informal club, more like an artistic movement within the department. The negatives were never printed using the metal masks, but in hand made cardboard masks that included the surrounding information from your negative on the final print. Those gobbly gooky numbers and letters became graphic elements in their own right as part of the final image.

It was something that appealed to me then and applied it to how I started shooting. Only on the absolute rarest of occasions will you ever see me "crop" out anything. To paraphrase a popular ad theme these days "what's in the frame stays in the frame". Without realizing it until recently I still shoot and print full frame.

On a recent walk about I stumbled across a school yard scene. It had the elements that struck me...size and man vs nature. So I shot it, and with the help of photoshop removed elements, add some impressionistic touches to others then melded it all back together again. The result...exploration of large vs small, man vs nature in "Schoolyard"

Today is shooting at the beach. Next week if I get my living room painted....up onto old Route 66 between San Bernardino and the Cajon Pass.