Internet at Last!

I must apologize for the tardiness of this blog entry. I have FINALLY arrived in Bamberg this past Tuesday and have been frantically trying to get everything organized and settled. Apparently however, Germans don't really seem too concerned with something as trivial as internet connection. Eventually though my tenacious (or annoying) persistency came out victorious and landed me with the overwhelmingly slow "internet stick" (yes that's what they call it). In other words, while waiting for this blog page to load, I have written a short novel- just kidding. Needless to say however, my internet is super slow. So please bare with me.

Anyway, this week's blog topic, tropos, I found very interesting. When I took the pictures for the earlier blog entries I did not really think about why I chose this angle, or to exclude/ include this or that. I just instinctually snapped the shot. So I guess aesthetics is what drove all of my decisions behind the photos I took. Since, I was still in Charleston, the photos I took are of flower boxes on a side street in the downtown area. I chose to photograph flowers because to me they represent a large part of Charleston. The city, resting on the coast of South Carolina, is extremely natural, filled with beautiful flowers and greenery. For me, the bright colors of the flowers give off a whimsical feel, and I tried to capture that in my photographs.

In the close-up photo, I wanted the pink flower to be the sole focal point of the photograph, in order to show how important the flora is to the region. That is why I chose to exclude the actual flower box and window. It is interesting that by just zooming in, you can change the entire perspective of the photograph. The close up shot presents an entirely different image compared to the one of all the different flower boxes. The shot with the multiple boxes, to me represents the charm of the houses in Charleston, rather than the importance of the flora.

These principles of Tropos are really useful because they make you stop and think okay why am I taking this shot? What do I want inside the frame and why? And now that I am finally in Germany I can start applying them to my sight seeing as well. When I look at the different monuments and castles I can question what internal visualization is the artist or architect trying to externally communicate?