Frank Jansen Photography

I thought I’d share another of my images from the ‘Conceptual Photography’ class that I’m taking. Part of last week’s assignment was to further enhance the emotion or idea used in the previous image; this was the solitude expressed by the fork bent over in its long journey.

While I worked on refining the original image, I want to share a reshoot of the same concept with a slightly different approach. I call the image above, ‘A Tree Grows’; the ‘tree’ is the only living thing in the sterile landscape that is presented in the background. I photographed the ‘tree’ in a hanging position with a pure white background and did the rest of the work after the capture; I created a layer from the cut-out of the white background and overlayed that layer with a woven pattern. Sizing this correctly and selecting a position that works finished the image.

I hope you enjoy the image and welcome any comments or questions you may have.

Even during the off-season, one might be drawn to the ballpark!

Earlier this month, I attended a company kick-off meeting at historic Fenway park in Boston. The outing was wonderful, but something was missing: the fans! Even on a snowy day, the park looks for its fans to bring the warm atmosphere to life inside its hallowed walls. Let’s hope the snow is gone by opening day!

In between events, I am taking an on-line class in ‘Conceptual Photography’. The thought behind conceptual photography is to express an idea or emotion in an image through the use of common objects that are not normally associated with the particular idea. This approach causes one to stretch the mental muscle a little bit more to relate an emotion through household objects, such as a fork in the case of the image, on which I am working.

The concept behind the solitary fork, bent by a force that could be old age, heavy burden or unending journey, is that the day becomes long, but the lonely travail is not over yet. I remember seeing a charcoal sketch by Piet Mondriaan in the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague, which portrayed trees bent over by the wind and feeling a similar emotion of the lonely traveler in an unending landscape.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be experimenting with this idea and different methods of photographing this lonely fork. As I get results that I like, I will post updates.