Sowing seeds

The newly built all-weather cricket nets on the playing field keep attracting my eye. I think it's the geometric shapes, and certainly the two-tone green of the artificial turf. Add in the orange temporary netting and the colour contrasts are obvious. The other day I managed to make a few pictures of the nets which weren't symmetrical and front on. It was the diagonals I liked in the picture on the right, and particularly the way the path has been cut by the astroturf. I wonder if it will be left that way or dug up and grassed over.

While the interest in that picture is largely in its formal qualities it doesn't say much else out of context. Although in a series of shots, maybe about the construction of the nets, it might.

This is something I'm beginning to think about more and more with photographs. Not only the ones I make, but those I look at too. The way pictures can work on different levels and contain different meanings. How they can be simple and complex at the same time.

The picture on the left is fairly bold. The main object in the frame is the newly installed irrigation pipe sprouting from the ground - a feature of many fields round these parts. The pump in the background is clearly also related to the subject of irrigation. Although a visually strong image it doesn't really say much else on its own.

Stepping back and taking in more of the scene brings in more elements to fill out the story. The planted field shows that the earth is drying and in need of water, the covered crop illustrates modern farming practice, the flat nature of the landscape is obvious and, when viewed larger, the sprayer is just visible in the distance. Formally it is not as eye catching a picture, although there is a rhythm to the composition - albeit a little off-kilter.

I much prefer looking at pictures which need a little time to understand rather than the ones which smack you straight between the eyes. The latter all too easily are passed over and forgotten.

I'm naturally drawn to machinery in the landscape. My natural attraction to geometric shapes is to blame, but also my interest in the contrast between man-made and natural forms, and the way people alter the landscape. I like the sweep of the sprayer's arm and its shadow in the shot below. Also the regular rows of the crop (whatever it is) and the tyre marks on the earth. The restricted palette appeals too - earth, greens and blues. The con-trail in the sky is something a 'traditional' landscape photographer would either have waited until it had dispersed or cloned out on the computer. I like it as another reminder of how man affects the environment.

I've long been fascinated with the way crops are sheathed these days. When the light catches this material it can look, from a distance, like a lake. Close up you can watch the wind making it ripple like water. Trying to make successful photographs which capture this effect is something I have yet to achieve. It's still an interesting subject matter to me, which is why I keep trying to make pictures of it.

If nothing else yesterday's brief wanderings got me thinking again. It's funny how an aimless drive round the usual haunts can throw up new pictures and ideas. Which makes me wonder, yet again, why people on photography forums have to ask where they can find inspiration. One chap even made a random 'ideas generator' - which is proving popular. It's just a bit of code which makes a random selection from a predetermined list of things to do with a camera. There's no originality. If you want inspiration then something less direct is what you need rather than an instruction which says "Make an image that joins feeling happy with pink". Yawn... Try this instead!

---