"Sunset"
As I have said repeatedly, I am terrible with phone photography and am fairly ignorant with regard to phone photo processing and editing apps. Today's prompt had both a technical and compositional component. The subject was intended to be something related to "clean up" and the photo was supposed to be taken and edited on your phone. As is often the case when I am faced with something with which I am woefully incompetent, I waited until nearly sunset to attempt my photo of the day.
Weber and I were sitting out on the patio surrounded by citronella candles and incense and I was smothered in insect repellent. I sat comfortably in my chair looking for something interesting to photograph. Though the surroundings were perfect for the part of me that wanted to relax, my creative self was becoming a little frantic. I was running out of light; I had to come up with a subject for today's photo.
I looked down at one of the citronella candles burring in a metal can. The colors were kind of pretty. But really...who wants to look at a photo of a candle burning in a rusted metal pail sitting on a concrete slab? I'm all about photographing my everyday, but I don't want to look back and be depressed by my uninteresting existence. Surely there must be something around that is more beautiful than a citronella candle. I was desperate.
With my phone, I snapped the photo of the burning candle. I discovered that the concrete created kind of an fascinating texture to the background of overall image. I hunted around on my phone for a photo processing app. I have a couple, but I don't use them very often. When I do, I tend to go for the seriously over processed look just to make it absolutely clear that the picture is an iPhonography image.
I am a huge fan of abstract art. I like that abstract images make me imagine and think. They force me to look beyond what I can easily see to what I need to see. I like that they are always new and fresh because each day, when I look at a work of art with fresh eyes, I am bringing something new and different to the work of art and it, in turn, gives me something new and different in return. As I looked at my photo of the burning bucket of citronella infused wax, the same process that I engage when looking at masterpieces of abstract art kicked in. Suddenly this tin container of wax looked like so much more.
I uploaded the photo into a processing app.
As I began what really ended up being minimal processing, the image emerged clearly as a sunset. Perhaps this is because the sun was indeed setting overhead. Perhaps it was because the many sunsets that I saw while we were in Delaware are still so vivid in my mind. Whatever the case, I saw a sunset.
Or is it a sunrise? Tomorrow it may be. Today it is a sunset.
