Tone Poems.

Sometimes the call to make a photograph originates from more than simply making a record. In musical composition we are familiar with orchestration of sound to create mood and to thus get past a rational mind set and appeal to feeling. So too in the visual arts. Composition, the intentional use of the elements of design ( colour, line, tone, texture etc.) to communicate thought is central to painting but is often overlooked in photography. There is something about using a machine that purports to give us an accurate reproduction of the world of things that seems to resist a more nuanced perspective.

In this set of photographs the subject matter, irises and rhododendrons, are commonplace enough that we have seen many 'factual' reproductions. Here I have used my camera to try to capture the feelings rather than the facts by using a narrow depth of field and selecting specific angles of view. Colour, light and shadow lead us into a tone poem of Spring.