Mood Shift

For anyone keeping tabs, the subject and composition of this work seems a lot like the work, ‘Shadow Heart’ posted on April 7, and it is indeed (shown in the insert here but follow the link to see the previous work larger). This capture was made about an inch to the right and half an inch closer than that one and cropped a little different. Ordinarily, I’d select just one from a series of nearly identical captures and ignore the rest, but in this case the photographs lent themselves to completely opposite transformations.

Taken together they illustrate the diverse paths similar compositions can take when creating photo art. Taken as separate creative acts they represent something else. I’d worked with each capture on different days – this one actually came first. When I began working with the capture that ultimately became ‘Shadow Heart’, I actually had not consciously realized how similar the two captures were. But given the preponderance of red and yellow in the capture which I’d chosen to take to the extreme here, and given that the black and white filter used in ‘Shadow Heart’ allows saturation of separate color channels and that red and yellow are especially dynamic, the seed must have planted itself in my head that the composition would be particularly effective as a noir piece. The ‘something else’ suggested by these works is the shifting vision an artist may take over the same composition on different days or at different times. In the case of these works I can rationalize that I shifted for art; I learned something with this work, or at least saw something I wanted to experiment with, and applied it to ‘Shadow Heart’. I actually, personally, feel ‘Shadow Heart’ is the better work (I know others feel the opposite).

Without really knowing, however, I am indeed rationalizing. Who’s to say I simply got less sleep one day versus the other? Or something in the news on one of the days pissed me off? Or on one of the days the Cubs won? Sure, I’d love to believe I make rational artistic decisions, but there’s a fair body of psycho analysis that art is an act of blowing one’s emotional nose. If a psychologist examined my work what would they see? Would a rational person really want to know? Would an artist give a good god damn?