It may look like a photo of a rock ...

mobilevirgin

mobilevirgin

I'm a cheeky little sausage
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Peter
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Yes
... but there's more to it than that.

This is an idea that's been brewing for a while. You can't get much more inanimate than a rock. Its an unyielding lump of, well, rock. Normally, we wouldn't give it a second thought. We just walk on them on the beach and maybe search out a flat one to skim on a lake.

And yet, if you look closer, each one is capable of giving away its whole life history - the patterns of wear, the colours, the seams of different material are all there to be deciphered if you know the code.

I don't know the code - geology was always a bit dry and lifeless when I was at school. That bit is for others to deal with. And you don't need to know the precise details anyway.

But I've been thinking of turning this into a project. The challenge is not so much to find the interesting rocks and stones - that bit's easy - but to try and photograph them in such a way that what I'm banging on about above makes sense to the viewer. I don't know if I've succeeded in the above, or whether it needs a coherent set of photos before the point becomes clear. Or whether I'm just talking gibberish and it will never make any sense.

Its not particularly important. It may not be particularly interesting. Since getting into photography in a serious way, I've realised (and said elsewhere) that photography makes me see things in a different way. This photo is an example of that.


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Excellent. Someone told me that the sign of wisdom is finding extraordinary attributes in ordinary objects which you have done here.
 
Thanks, RH - I'm glad someone gets it :)

I was beginning to wonder if it was just me.
 
I could not agree more.

Only through photography have I started to look at nature in more depth. The beauty in objects, which most people do not even notice, is breath taking. Just take a simple leaf and look at the complex structure and shear variety.

Nature that we photograph today has been 1000’s of million years in the making!
 
mobilevirgin said:
Thanks, RH - I'm glad someone gets it :)

I was beginning to wonder if it was just me.
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We're Scousers, no one understands us. I went to the same school as John Lennon. There was only one teacher who thought Lennon had talent and the school got rid of him.

Sometimes the response time on this forum is long. My record is almost a day and a half without a comment.

Just keep doing the right thing and right things happen.
 
I really like it. It's strange, but as you all have said, I find that I'm seeing more things around me since getting started out on this journey.
 
Agree with other comments, rh and mobilevirgin.

This has struck a chord with me - I've just walked the dogs (we're lucky enough to live right in the middle of the New Forest) and have been pondering the idea of getting a shot very low down looking up on to the underside of bracken. A bit like some shots I've seen of tree canopies.

Your rock makes a pleasing composition. :)



Just seen the Scousers comment. I worked in Liverpool for a couple of years and loved it - great people. :)
 
Come on guys pull yourselves together...it's a stone. :p
 
Baz777 said:
But Alby, where did the stone come from?

Billions of years in the making or divine intervention made in 6 days?
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Don't get me started on the god versus evolution debate :nono:

Nice stone BTW and you've certainly got folk thinking (y)
 
I like the idea but I think that to get people really thinking and seeing what you are showing, without the story to backup the images, you need to go way way further with the image concepts. :)
 
dazzajl said:
I like the idea but I think that to get people really thinking and seeing what you are showing, without the story to backup the images, you need to go way way further with the image concepts. :)
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Thanks all for the comments. Its appreciated.

Daz - can you expand on your view a little. This is an idea that's only just starting to take shape and I'm interested to see what other people think of it.

Slapo - thanks for the lighting comment - you're probably correct - I'm stuck with what I've got at the moment - a light tent and 2 halogen bulbs. No camera flash except the on board one and I don't like using that. And I don't understand lighting anyway.
 
Well you could get a pair of Sigma EF 500/530 DG Super and they wouldn't cost you much more than a Nikon SB800.
I have a single Sigma EF 500 DG Super on my D50 and it works great, its strength are great for the price, especially when coupled with the D50. It's great for bouncing.
 
I like the concept. :)

I used to have a CD full of images that I took when I was working in microscopy. It was the early days of digital and image analysis and I had some fab stuff of single cells in three colours fluorescing and this just reminded me of the geology ones. If you slice a piece of granite and use crossed polarizers on it it shows the crystalline structure.

It's fabulous! I'm sure it was Cardiff University that was digitally recording some of their stuff and the images were fantastic!
 
mobilevirgin said:
Daz - can you talk some pish and twaddle?
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Till the cows come home my good man. :D

My thoughts were that if you wanted to get people to think about the rock in a deeper way than a prop in an image, and do it without an explanation in text as a (cop out ;) ) back up, then the images have a lot of work to do.

Having the rock there in the shot you posted, serves more as an illustration to the text than a statement, or more to the point, a question.

For my mind, you need to use all the creative tools at your disposal to make people stop, look and then by far the hardest part.... think.

Not at all easy and I think this is a project where extensive photoshopery could open loads of doors.

Some ideas that come to mind right of the top of my head are shoot the bottom of a foot and blend in the rock as the ball. Really nice if you capture that foot whilst at the height of a step as it walks across a beach perhaps, or other rocks and pebbles.

Set up a still life of some real staple foods, some fresh crops, perhaps some ground to flower, some potatoes and put the rock in as a part of this. the use of light and positioning could either make the rock very obvious and stand apartish, or very subtle and something people might miss on the first take. Those that then didi notice the little rock hiding in there would surely have to start a thought process on why???????
 
That's not pish and twaddle - that's an interesting view. It gives me more to think about, so thanks for taking the time to reply.

I'm not naturally creative and this is new territory for me.
 
Ok..Its a Stone and you are all raving mad. ;)
 
So I am not alone :)

While waiting around at Durdle Door in Dorset for 2 hours waiting for the sun to go down, I was layed out flat picking around in the stones looking closely for unusually coloured/marked stones to bring home to take pics of when I invest in a macro lens. My boyfriend thought I was nuts!
 
Love it, and like the mini debate it has sparked. I agree that there is so much detail all around us, yet we mostly ignore it and take it all for granted.

A good image, and great text alongside. A partnership to be proud of :D

Gary.
 
Baz777 said:
I could not agree more.

Only through photography have I started to look at nature in more depth. The beauty in objects, which most people do not even notice, is breath taking. Just take a simple leaf and look at the complex structure and shear variety.

Nature that we photograph today has been 1000’s of million years in the making!
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exactly right(y)
 
ok, i think i can see where your going, but i think the actual rock you have used is a bit uninteresting(my opinion) i just cant see past the rock. perhaps half a rock with some fossils in to show a bit more.:shrug:

i am looking forward to seeing how this progresses
 
I think you could have done with a little more DoF. The geologist in me wants to see more detail of the rock and less of the background ;)

Nice concept - now keep up the good work!

B.
 
I like it. I see a concept in my head, I may try and get it into photographs myself.

Kind of along the lines of your picture, What do you see? Second picture could be a huge castle, a viaduct anything mad of rocks. Do you still see a rock? Thats the kind of thought it provokes. Some people need the castle to see past the rock.

That kind of concept to look beyond what you see and let your imagination run.
 
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