Capturing the Brilliance of Dying Leaves

By:  Greg
October 22, 2009


In this next shot the vanishing point is not as readily present due to the distance of the photographer from the subject, but if you pretend that it is present, you wouldn’t be able to shake the feeling that the passage of the seasons is nothing more than a joke which is only funny to a Wiser and Greater Being than us.


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In this next shot, a technical and artistic masterpiece, we see a skilled blend of the tenuous law of twenty-sevenths (which is the law of thirds cubed) and the vanishing point. It is not unusual for a photo of this magnitude to send the most skilled and experienced of photography critics into a listless trance-like state due to the work’s achievement. Don’t be alarmed though if you find the photo completely uninteresting whatsoever… and don’t see any foliage at all… it is not unusual for the untrained eye to miss the vast majority of the photographic value available for consumption in pieces like this.


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Our next topic is the use of perspective in leaphotography. In the most simple terms available, perspective is the mathematical fact that for a given angle, “theta”, the length of the arc of the circle swept out by theta at different radii is linearly related to theta, and therefore when, theta is small, two arcs which subtend theta, and whose radii have large deltas, can themselves have small deltas (and vice versa). We are of course using the colloquialism that “delta” refers to the difference between two quantities. Contrary to what is taught in most middle school art classes, focal length does not increase or decrease perspective. In this shot Sam made careful calculations in order to ensure that the angles subtended by the road and the foliage were equal in order to emphasize the imperativeness of the coexistence of machine and nature in The North.


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Employing the opposite effect here, I maximized the difference of the angles subtended by the tree and the house in order to suggest just how parasitic the human condition is when viewed through the the lens of nature, and our shameful attempts to disguise this reality with whitewashing and landscaping.


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Read about the author:   Greg
Enjoy this TR? Read another: TR: A PNW Summer – Part 2

Related Stuff:

  1. TR: Capturing the Brilliance of Dying Leaves
  2. Le Massive “Big Flake” Run

5 Comments

  1. Kingsley
    wrote on October 22nd, 2009 at 9:35 pm  
    1

    Solid work dude. Mathgeek/photogeek/wordsmith AND FIS? Damn.

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  2. sfmornay
    wrote on October 25th, 2009 at 1:00 pm  
    2

    Greg sez:

    ” … this gem which uses the vanishing point to help the viewer interpret the post modern struggle of man versus machine.”

    Thanks for clearing that up. I had convinced myself that it represented the spiritual crisis resulting from the intellectual paralysis brought on by confronting the physical inevitability of Zeno’s paradox.

    Respond to this comment/comment thread
    • Sam
      wrote on June 21st, 2010 at 1:24 pm  
      3

      somehow I didn’t catch that the first time around. You really need to comment more often, that was awesome!

  3. Greg
    wrote on October 25th, 2009 at 1:42 pm  
    4

    No problem… the autonomy of art though lets us both be right :D

    Respond to this comment/comment thread
  4. Anonymous
    wrote on October 18th, 2010 at 12:14 am  
    5

    AMAZING. Never really found someone who loved winter as much as me. SoulMates?

    Respond to this comment/comment thread
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