Curves

Curves


I've taken many photographs showing curves- sea shores being a prime example, but never looked for curves as in the example in the Course folder - seeing circles in a photograph, where I would only have seen a tree and figures (P66 Exercise: Curves). I want to look now through my own photographs to see whether I have unwittingly used curves myself.
I've found lots of examples of curves taken whilst working for this course, but think they were all deliberate shots with the curves a known part of the image.


Most of my first assignment work was done at Cesar Manriques home in Lanzarote. This view of a spiral staircase taken from above was one of the photographs taken there. Taken in very bright light,the shining white floor provides a background to the stone walls and the highly polished wooden treads.

Whilst walking along the coastal pathway in Lanzarote, I saw several of this style of structure - strong dry stone lava walls in beautiful curves, with fairly ugly concrete struts joining the inner and outer walls at the top. I passed them several times without even thinking them worthy of photography. What made these so photogenic was seeing them at the right time of day when the sun was in the right position, creating dramatic sweeps of shadow on the walls and the ground beneath.

As a complete contrast to the previous 2 manufactured curves, the next image was taken in my garden on a bright day . I used an image of the wisteria in the Contrasts assignment and this was taken on the same day. One stem of the plant protrudes from the others and its blossom forms a graceful curve as it arches out and downwards. More fronds form curves in the background.

For my fourth curve, I'm returning to manufactured things.

There are many curves in this photograph: the wheel arch, the tyre, the handle, the air vent and the stripes. The curve of the air vent matches the curve of the door edge; the wheel, tyre and wheel arch curves match each other. The strong sunlight makes splashes of reflection and some shadows. Black and white make strong contrasts. The only straight lines are diagonal within the air vent and the edge of the frame.