The Tyranny of Symmetry ... for anahata.c by auntietk
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Description
In my conversations with Mark, the topic of symmetry has come up on more than one occasion. He says, "symmetry is a tyrant," and he's right. In order to take a perfectly symmetrical shot, you have to be standing in EXACTLY the right place, and your camera has to be perfectly square to the subject, and it's a Herculean task to get it even close to being right! This is especially true of buildings, in my experience.
So imagine this: I'm standing on the sidewalk in Chicago across from the old Chicago Public Library building thinking about my conversations with Mark. I'm three or four feet back from the curb with my camera up in front of my face, and I realize I'm not in the right place. So I take a step to my left, then another, and another, and I'm almost right there! One more step will do it.
Bang! My perfectly symmetrical shot of the library is now blocked by the biggest lamp post in the history of the world, and a bus just pulled up in front of me.
I took the picture anyway. :P
Even though the shot wasn't planned, and I didn't get anything close to what I had envisioned, I loved the way this turned out. It's different and serendipitous. An unexpected gift.
After the bus pulled away I moved to the other side of the lamp post and got the shot I wanted ... I'll show it to you later.
In the meantime, this is for Mark: For his friendship and artistic inspiration and encouragement, in honor of his encyclopedic knowledge of art and architecture, and for his willingness to share what he knows.
Thank you for everything, my dear friend. With much love and light and big hugs from the West Coast ...
Comments (24)
wysiwig
And with all that it is still nearly symmetrical! Isn't it great when your plans go astray? This is a fine image made more so by the foliage. If it weren't for serendipity I'd have almost nothing to show.
pimanjc
Excellent exposure.
Faemike55
and here I thought you planned the shot to center on the lamp post Great capture
RodS
This is GREAT, Tara! That lamp post makes this shot - it would have been a nice shot of the building, but this just adds so much to the photo. Glad you posted this, my dear friend!
kgb224
Superb capture Tara. God Bless.
PHELINAS
Superbe!
Juliette.Gribnau
I am glad the tree-branches confuse the symmetry, because I realy don't like symmetry, but you did a beautiful photo
whaleman
I agree, the tyranny of symmetry can be just as bothersome as the tyranny of the majority!
durleybeachbum
What a surprise! As Mark says, serendipity rules, in my case even the 'choice' of camera.
jayfar
The things we do for friends!! Great shot Tara and so glad you lived to tell the tale.
Katraz
It works for me, nice shot.
Celart
Wow. That's great! You have captured such a difficult light. Bellissima foto. Brava
dixievb
LUVIT!
MrsRatbag
I love this; it's larger than life and twice as lovely! Well done you!
helanker
Well, this is a really different shot and I like it alot. I love the reflections on that lamp post. Beautiful shot, Tara :)
jocko500
cool looking
bobrgallegos
I was thinking like Mike that this was a planned shot. It turned out to be a great shot Tara!!
ZanderXL
You did such a good job on this that, at first, I thought it was one of those images where a mirror is used through the middle of the image to get a symetrical reflection. Then I noticed the trees. Nature always gives it away :) Nice shot!
anahata.c
Thank you so much, Tara, for your loving words and for linking them and me with this beautiful image. Having seen some of your other symmetrical shots, I know symmetry hasn't stopped you, and your other shots of this old library were beautiful tributes to its strong yet poetic stature. You do this city proud...Thank you for your thoughts and love, and I return the thoughts right back to you. And btw, this shot is beautiful, and to take the above comments a step further, maybe serendipity is just another word for our inner-eye dragging us to great shots when we're not even aware of it; and suddenly we look up and, boom, we have a shot...Who knows. It's a beautiful shot in any case, and the beauty of your sense of the post---with all its light and dark---is matched by the soft-leaves canopy, and your looming snippets of the old glorious library in the background. And if that's the bus back there, I never thought about it till you explained it! I thought it was part of the building! How you got it so perfectly matched to the shot, I'll never know. Beautiful image. And thanks again, Tara, I greatly appreciate the dedi and the thought. (Next time try to get the bus and post standing still, and get the library zooming by. Or---as is almost suggested by the shot---get the post taking off and flying into space. Just some thoughts for the future...)
blondeblurr
It's not always necessary or better, to achieve perfection with results like this - in fact this is 'splendid' in all it's 'splendour' (?) - accidental images are far more interesting IMHO ... BTW that lamp post looks rather phallic ;) but is softened by the foliage ;) BB
hipps13
sure makes a smile when in the way can change a frame warm hugs, Linda Kaye
Chipka
This is an amazing shot. I love the fact that a perfect storm of events and random circumstances conspired to make this into so interesting a take on something so familiar to me. I'm not a big fan of symmetry...I like it, but I don't think of it as an ideal to attempt to live up to. Don't think it's tyrannical either: it's more...well...overexposed. This shot, however, does something wonderful. It shows symmetry in a way that still opens the way for surprise and well...surprise is ultimately what life is about for me anyway, especially in terms of art. And I have to say that you had what I'd call a typical Chicago experiment. If there's a shot you want, there's a bus about to zoom through it, even if you're inside of a house on a side street where buses aren't even allowed to run...one will zoom by on ANOTHER street that just so happens to be at an angle to a particular mirror (the mirror in your shot) and so there WILL be a CTA bus zooming through your shot. That's such a Chicago thing; I think that when you become a bus driver here, you learn just how to do that. It doesn't work with el/subway trains, however. I guess they read a different manual. I like this shot, and I rather like the fact that I know exactly where you were standing when you took this!
moochagoo
Very unusual idea for a picture :)
photosynthesis
I find symmetry very appealing, though there's also something very appealing about finding just the right balance in a non-symmetrical shot. I never would have thought of taking a photo with a lamppost right in the middle of it, but this works somehow. And, by the way, if your symmetry happens to be off a little bit, Photoshop's Warp tool is a great way to cheat & defeat it's tyranny...