Pre Project 26 and 27

Implied shapes

I have read and re-read these items, and have also researched the subject, and have come to two conclusions.

1) I have either no imagination, or too much imagination.

2) Implied shapes in any picture are not real. They only exist in the imagination of the person viewing the picture, and in that respect, the idea that one person can take a picture with a particular implied shape in mind and expect another person to see the same shape is, I believe, flawed. It all depends upon the individuals imagination.

As examples, I have taken two pictures of my own choice from “the textbook” as advised in project 27. The task is to select implied circles.

The first is of a group of singers taken by Russell Lee in 1940.

I first chose this as I could see an implied circle in the shot as outlined in red below. It was the curve of the tallest singers arms that led me to this.

However, looking again at the picture, I could see, instead of a circle, an implied triangle prompted by a line from the same singers elbow to her finger and the songbook, so I marked this in red also

Having thought this was confusing, I removed the red triangle, looked again, only to be confronted by an implied rectangle! In fact, there are at least two implied rectangles, because the taller singer could represent an upright rectangle herself.

  

So…, only slightly confused at this point, I decided to look at another picture. This time it was one taken by Peter H. Emerson taken in 1888, only 121 years ago.

The whole group and the scythe created, I thought, a good implied circle, so I drew it.

 

Unfortunately, I thought more about this and thought that the two people on the left created a nice implied rectangle, so I drew that one!

Sometimes you just can’t leave things alone can you? Doesn’t the centre man make an implied triangle in his own right?

But hold on a minute…, that scythe has a line in the handle that leads to the top of the centre man’s head, and then his arm (and his implied line of sight) leads down to the right man’s hand, and guess what…, if I now connect these up I have yet another implied triangle!!!!

I really believe that I could analyse almost every picture and find lots of implied shapes, and if I can, then so can anybody else, so if I try to adopt these implied thingy's into my compositions, there is a great risk that only I will see the intended implication, and that other people will see implications that were not intended.

This all leaves me with confusion, or is it an implication of confusion???