One of the things I have confirmed to myself since embarking on my picture-making on the shoreline is that large landscapes are made up of numerous smaller ones, and they in turn are made up of even smaller landscapes . . . and so-on. . . to where a microscope intervenes between camera and viewer. I like these minature places as they often have quite close resemblances to the landscapes that contain them. I find it interesting to bring out aspects of ambiguity in the images I make, so that scale may be uncertain, sky may be sea, rock may be water, time short (before the tide returns) and long (so slow is the pace of erosion).
After I have recorded a small landscape I often experiment to place the image in a supporting frame, both to contain and lift the image from where it was found: I do this here, back on the computer.I am still learning about this process and endeavouring to find strategies to secure or extend particular planes, shapes and forms, without significently altering them from what I first saw. But what is more subjective about this framing perhaps is how it is going to work contained within an actual picture frame of wood and glass.
The way the lens actually limits what can be secured by the camera often results in a new emphasis. Before the viewfinder or screen frames the small landscape the camera makes, that image remains situated within all the other overlapping and superimposed landscapes of which it is just one small part, and amongst which it can be so easily overlooked.
Framing, both digital and for hanging, should contribute to the making of a picture. I am a bit late in the discovery of this, perhaps. So at the time of writing this I am setting about framing a number of the images shown in the flickr album linked below; Pool Calm has already received the picture framing treatment, very successfully I think (sorry— I can't show the result here) which has set me on this track . . .
flickr album: small compositions
