The Artful Engineer

Thanksgiving is an American holiday, not an English one, so I am not sure what serves as the starting gun for Christmas decoration deployment in London, but they were definitely ready to go with at least a month to spare. Along with lots of other decorations, there were an abundance of beautifully decorated trees. While I did take some full-length portraits of them, I decided early on to collect close-up views like the one above. Given that Christmas trees are invariably tall pointy triangles—acute isosceles triangles, if you are mathematically minded—including the whole tree in a rectangular frame is guaranteed to include a lot of background, especially in the top of the frame. Since urban backgrounds tend to be busy, it was easiest to go in close and avoid them altogether. Photographed this way, any given tree offers dozens of compositions, but I usually just grabbed one or two quickly. In the image above, it is clear that the large flower on the right is the subject because the flower on the left is partially obscured. That second flower, and the curve of smaller gold leaves, complement and frame the primary one. Gold and green and white also make a nice color palette.

Being so far north (51° latitude) December days in London are quite short, so there is plenty of opportunity to photograph the lights, especially because blue hour is correspondingly long. When I saw the shiny clock face reflecting the still-bright southwestern sky, I knew I had my subject. Because the bright part of the sky is fairly broad, there is some room to maneuver, but you definitely want to stand near the sweet spot where the reflection is strongest. The golden lights and the golden clock pair beautifully with the twilit sky. I was lucky because I didn’t realize that my (inadvertent) high shutter speed was interacting with the refresh rates on the LED lights; that’s why the lights on the pillar on the right are so much brighter than the ones on the left. I only took two frames, and the other one was similar, but the lights on the left are even dimmer in the other one. As it is, I think that the left-to-right dim-to-bright progression works well because it points toward the light source of the reflection on the clock face. In fact, I think it works better this way than it would if they were all equal. But had it been the reverse progression (right to left) I think that would have been a disaster. I got lucky this time, but need to pay more attention and should have taken twenty frames, not two, so I would have had choices.

The image above has a lot of nice features: the progression from in-focus to out-of-focus, the vague form of the person standing between the pillars, and the reflections off the bricks. This is an unusual image because I feel that the person is the subject and, despite being out of focus, works. I don’t have another frame where the figure is in focus to prove the point, but I don’t think that would be as successful. This is one of those occasional images that is completely unlike any other I have ever taken.

The above image is the sharpest of three identical compositions and, unfortunately, I should have taken a slightly wider view. I really like the arrangement of elements in the frame, but with I had just a little more space on the right hand edge so the flower wasn’t touching. Perhaps I will try a little generative fill to extend the edge a smidge and see how it works.

Leaving the gold color theme behind, I love the color combination in this next image: bright red against silver and muted blue. There are also nice contrasts of texture here, too. Compositionally, there is more going on here than just the wreath: round wreath and round doorknob and round berries; a triangle of silver fittings; and the vertical grooves in the door and vertical handle and vertical mail slot. I did have a little cleanup to do, since I was wearing dark clothing and my reflection was quite prominent in the shiny doorknob.

And just to close with something completely different, there was this bizarre and dystopian Tim Burton-inspired Christmas display at the Harvey Nichols store in Knightsbridge. I thought this image was worth sharing just because it is interesting, but I fully admit it is a documentary image of someone else’s art, not a creation of my own.