Statement of Work #1: Snow Hydrant

Composition

• Amount of Subject in Frame: I chose to frame a lot of the fire hydrant in this picture because I thought that the extra detail was instrumental to showing how the light reflects at the top. It also allowed me to create more depth of field in the picture with the shrubbery as kind of a backdrop, but nothing more.

• Sharpness: The sharpness of the picture is really only limited to the fire hydrant. I like how the rivets are showing and even some of the writing along the right side of the hydrate. The background is blurry as it doesn't really add any value to the main subject.

• Lighting: The lighting of the picture is daylight. I chose to dim some of the background in an effort to keep the viewer from being distracted by external things on the left side of the picture. I also think that the amount of light is appropriate for the subject and lends well to the shiny surfaces of the hydrant.

Concept
When I created this image I was thinking about how to frame up ordinary, everyday things is such a way that would make them more interesting. My goal for a viewer is to walk away considering life in a little different way - seeing things they may not have necessarily noticed before.

Method
For this picture I experimented with different distances and apertures. What I finally landed on was to come relatively close to the subject with a low aperture. This causes the background fade that you see. I used manual focus and concentrated specifically on the left side of the fire hydrant. For this reason, some of the subject is blurred on the right.

Motivation
To simply shed light on everyday items and put them in a different way.

Context
Im comparing this photograph to some of the works of Dorothea Lange. Although many of her pictures were of people, I find similarities in the composition of her pictures to this one. It is definitely different in that my picture is much less emotional than the pictures I found done by Lange. Further to this, her pictures seem to have more in focus backgrounds than what I was going for with Snow Hydrant.