Picture of the day

Today, the picture of the day is a simple picture of a girl on a kitchen table:

That is Kim, my favourite model. I shoot her a lot: see my Fine Art Nudes site, mvwphoto.tumblr.com, as well as this blog. I shoot her all the time because she is a great model, very talented, and especially because we consistently create art together.

And that is a special gift for anyone in arts – someone to make art with (and no, get your minds out of the gutter, it’s nothing more than that). An artistic muse. She features heavily also in my upcoming Fine Art Nudes exhibit, www.michaelsmuse.com – I hope to see some of you there for the official opening on Saturday.

And today, I also wanted to show a picture like this to re-emphasize what makes a picture interesting. Worth seeing. And I think there are several.

  • Of course an image has to be technically good. Namely well exposed, in focus where it needs to be, and well lit.
  • Most importantly – it should involve some sort of storytelling, or perhaps rather, evoking questions. An image has to have some connection with something happening. It has to have the ability to make the viewer wonder what it is that is happening; perhaps to make sense of it, to make the viewer work in out in his or her mind.
  • This picture is black and white. That often adds to the storytelling. It also stops distractions – the subject and the story are important, not the colours of the kitchen implements.
  • The setting needs to be relevant to the story.
  • The close crop adds extra tension. This is sometimes allowed – ask Degas.
  • For extra mood, I even added some film grain.

So a picture like this can actually have a had fair amount of thought put into it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *