Sibling Assignment #163: Buoy and Sailboat on the Hudson River

Here's what I assigned for Carol, Christy, and me to do:

Since Carol is taking an online photography class, let's do an exercise together.

1.  Read this article.

2.  Make yourself pause, look, and see and create a well-composed picture following the instruction of Bobby Baker.  In other words, keep the picture simple.

3.  Write a paragraph about your experience doing this.

Carol combined my assignment with an assignment from her class and presented a picture of upside down solar lights, here, and Christy focused on a door in the Annie room in her Martins Creek home, here.

I was struck the most in reading Bobby Baker's article by his emphasis on minimalism.  I liked his idea that pictures can be beautiful when there is very little in the frame.  I have been working pretty consistently with negative space in pictures for a few years now and the way it calms the mind, gives the mind a rest, and provides space within a picture's frame for contemplation and rest.  

When the Deke and I met up with Adrienne and Alex Friday night at Growlers and Gill, it excited me when they told me about a path along the Hudson River not from Adrienne's apartment at Nyack Beach State Park.  I immediately thought that since the Hudson is such a wide river as it flows by Nyack, that I'd be able to take pictures focused on a single image with the river providing plenty of negative space.

I was right.  I took quite a few pictures, here, but for this assignment, I'll post this one:

As you can see, it was a hazy day along the trail of Nyack Beach State Park.  It gives this picture a dreamy quality.  I tried to give this picture plenty of empty space and the river provides that.  To me, there's a contrast at work between the fixed solidness of the buoy and the light mobility of the sailboat and I like how they sit in proximity to each other.  I also like the three different textures of the background as the near shore blends into the hills behind it which blend into the gray sky.  It's all gray, but different shades of gray, making this nearly empty scene dreamy and calming to look upon.

Hmmm....I decided to see what this picture would look like with some of the water in the foreground cropped.  See what you think: