Flowers On Mars

Are any rules being followed here? Composition, Rule Of Thirds and all that? Focal point – is there one?

One of the very first works I sold was like today’s photo art – no focal point at all. Just a field of golden, tall grass that I had edged and saturated. It was exactly what the customer was looking for – just a blast of color coming at her. No rules, little artsy fartsy expression or textbook form or dramatic moodiness.  A liability of being serious about our art is that we take ourselves too seriously, like a movie drenched with a director’s self-absorption to the point of irrelevance. Form over function.

That it’s “Art” does not foster immunity from “who give a shit”.

I captured a sharp macro of the tiny blooming flowers of a bush (yeah, no, I don’t know what it’s called), softened it, added texturing and increased the red saturation. I cropped it down even tighter and added an additional light source from the upper right, just enough to add visual interest without detracting from that blast of color which is, after all, the point.

​Sometimes art reveals itself in the rules the artist doesn’t follow.