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| Aquilegia vulgaris 'Alba' 21 May 2025 |
Asymmetry & Slight Anachronisms
I have a friend who often tells me, “Alex you keep reiterating yourself.” He is right and particularly when I write my blogs. Because I have 6475 of them I forget that I may have forgotten of previous blogs as I did today when I was walking on the back lane with my male cat Niño.
On the lane there was a large clump of Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Alba’. These plants are commonly called Columbines. I was startled by its obvious symmetry. I decided to cut one of the stems and scan it and write a blog as I am right now.
About all I can bring that is different is that with all my years of scanning (began I 2001) I may have gotten a bit more sophisticated.
But there is one topic here that I can raise that I have not raised before. In that past century we used to understand what Rembrandt lighting was. Rembrandt and many of his contemporaries would pose their subjects by a window. The window side would make half the face light and the other dark or darker if no reflectors were used.
In my years as a magazine and portrait photographer I have always used that method.
I have a friend, en excellent photographer, who recently told me (almost apologetically) that he was shooting head-shots. I immediately told him that since he was getting paid, to actually work as a photographer in this 21st century is not bad. He added, sadly, that his subjects wanted both the sides of their face evenly lit (like a phone selfie?). I had no more words.