Business Card + Contact Sheet

The Telecaster

The Telecaster

The first picture of the Telecaster here is of the body of the guitar showing reflections of the room that it is in (Sherlock Holmes poster, light, etc.) It is by no means a great picture, but the reflection makes the guitar almost 'invisible' and you can barely tell that it is even a guitar with a quick glance. A neat feature is how the guitar is blurred and/or out of focus, but the reflection is quite clear and sharp while it is usually the other way around. Guitars a just an instrument and it is not what they are themselves that makes them special and unique, it is what a musician does with it to make it that special. Anyone can own a guitar but that does not mean that they can play it and create meaning with it. There's also some nice contrast between the white of the top and the bottom and the dark in the middle. This contrast symbolizes the power and versatility of the guitar as a musical instrument. Not only is it capable of making light, beautiful music, it is quite capable of playing heavy death metal type music with screeching guitar solos and a much darker ambience.

The second picture shows the guitar in a very different light. It is a much warmer and softer feel, almost as if it were shot on film. The image is slightly skewed with the visible part of the guitar tilted off to the right, which prevents the image from being to static and adds some excitement to the image. With the right filter this could be a very cool vintage shot of the guitar because even right now without altering the image it feels a little older than the guitar actually is. The Telecaster model of guitar has been around for over fifty years and this shot of a modern guitar with a realistic vintage feel harkens back to the original days of this type of guitar. It acts as a bridge between years and shows how even in this modern age there are still similarities between now and the past. You would also expect the contrast to be sharp between the guitar and the background, but fortunately, the silver on the guitar acts as a sort of transition between the gray background and the wood of the guitar making the transition much softer on the eyes.

This last picture is rather similar to the first in that it becomes interesting once the reflection is considered in the picture. It achieves the same effect as the first, except perhaps a little neater without all the reflection from the walls. It is a nice, symmetric image that balances the top and the bottom of the picture quite well. The symmetry demonstrates the mathematical qualities of the guitar or music in general. Yes, music is about freedom and expressing yourself, but there are also rules of numbers and scales, chords, etc. that need to be followed. The shine of the light off the knobs here finish the image off with an almost dreamlike quality that is accentuated by the perfect reflection below. The shimmering, shining lights off of the knobs again remind us that it is capable of create noises that shimmer and dance. If one were to play some nice melodies in a major key it would seem as if the guitar itself was sparkling and shining along.

rbtJr.

Covered In Snow - DIsneyland Paris

Back in December the “Disney Parks Blog” team took advantage of a rare opportunity: natural snow in Disneyland. Disneyland Paris is the only Disney Park in the world to experience snow naturally and even for them it does not happen too often. What resulted was a series of photos that showcased different iconic attractions and locations, from “it’s a small world” to “Sleeping Beauty Castle”, in a new and different way for many people. One definite highlight of this series was the picture of the “Mark Twain Riverboat” and “The Haunted Mansion.”

The image is tilted (or skewed) to the left, which is hardly noticeable if you just take a quick look at the picture. A tilted or canted angle adds a dynamic to the picture that prevents it from being too static or unmoving (Photo Idea Index p. 32). When you take a longer look, it is apparent the image is tilted because of all the people leaning to the left. The tilt gives the picture, or more specifically the subjects of the picture, an interesting perspective. “The Haunted Mansion” in the background is even creepier and there is an eerie almost otherworldly quality to the image.

The creepiness of the mansion is added to by the contrast of it and the “Mark Twain Riverboat.” Basically, contrast is just when the differences between two objects or scenes are highlighted and have a larger effect on the image. The white of the riverboat contrasts with the dark of the mansion making the mansion look even darker that it truly is. Most likely accidental, but all of the people near the mansion are dressed in black while the people on the riverboat have more variety in their colors, with some reds and some whites in the mix. Nevertheless, this small detail adds to the contrast featured in this picture. More importantly than the color though, is the lines of the mansion and the curves of the riverboat (Photo Idea Index p. 102). The straight edges of the mansion make it darker, more controlled, less free than the riverboat. The riverboat, for the most part has many curves which help to highlight the fact that is continuously in motion, even if it is frozen in time in the picture. Not to mention that in this shot it is coming around a bend in the river.

Finally, one element that can never be forgotten about in a picture is water, and its uniqueness as a reflective surface (Photo Idea Index p. 68). A reflective surface is pretty self-explanatory, anything such as a mirror, water, or any other surface where there is a mirror-image or reflection of an object. It can serve several purposes, any of which include extending the image, highlighting its power in the shot, etc. The river in this picture accomplishes several things that nothing else really can, or at least if it did, it would not do it as well as the water. The reflection of the white riverboat stands out in stark contrast to the rest of the dark, gray water. It extends the riverboat making it seem bigger and giving it a much larger presence in the picture. This extension of the boat (and the top floors of the mansion) prevent the image from seeming static and having the boat and the mansion sitting in the middle of the shot awkwardly. The reflection conveys movement and makes the riverboat appear to have more power over the river than it actually does. A neat sub-image of this main picture could be focused on the water or the birds in the water. If the rest of the image was cropped out and only the water remained it would be clear that this is a stormy, bleak winter day and it had just or is about to snow. The photographer responsible for this picture did a tremendous job in showing us another side of Disneyland Paris, as was his goal, because if you looked at this image without context, the last place you would guess where this picture was taken was in fact in Disneyland Paris.

-rbtJr.

Photo taken from http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2010/12/a-view-from-disneyland-paris-2/