Location Taken: Mystery Cave/Forestville State Park, Minnesota
Time Taken: June 2010
You know, I think this is an excellent shot at showing this well-foliaged forest. I mean, you can barely tell what anything is at all!
There are some cases where you have excellent lighting and a clear shot of what you’re trying to photograph but the subject itself isn’t cooperating at all. Or worse, as in this case, is inherently difficult to photograph.
You know that saying, “can’t see the forest for the trees”? Aka can’t see the big picture because of the little details? Well, this is a good photo for showing why that happens.
It’s a picture of the forest, showing how the canopy and the underbrush are around the same color. There’s the lines of trees in the middle to help distinguish the two, but your eye keeps getting caught on small details, without managing to even make sense of those. Did you notice the small flowers in the bushes? Or that one larger bush right in front, which I think was what I was trying to make the focus of the photo? It just blends right in, doesn’t it?
Mind you, if this was a 3D image and not a 2D one, you’d spot that bush right off. And you’d really appreciate the way the trees go back into the distance before they get obscured by even more foliage. But it is 2D, and the forest becomes a blur of green leaves.
This, of course, triggers our brains into trying to make sense of what we’re looking at, so because looking at the whole thing doesn’t work, we start focusing on tiny details. And then completely lose track of the fact that it’s a forest. Which makes you want to try looking at the big picture again, which is still a blur of green, and the process repeats until your brain rebels and makes you stop looking at the dang thing.
Amazing how a photo with as little contrast as this has contains a lot of depth of thought, no?
