"Subtleties"

"Subtleties"
©David A. Ziser

I feel this is a very mysterious image.  Part of that mysteriousness is caused by the shadow play and subtle densities within this image.

I’ve been trying to remember the back story on this image. As best as I can piece it together, it was made about 10:15 p.m. as we returned home from dinner at at a local restaurant in San Jose del Cabo a few years ago.  This is an agave plant right outside the entrance of our friends home in Mexico. 

I had just gotten my new Canon 5D Mark II camera and was testing it’s low light capabilities. Check out the camera specs below and you'll have a clearer understanding of what I mean.

As I was reviewing images for another project, I stumbled across this one. I was immediately taken by the subtle dark tones throughout the image. The image looked OK in color but I wasn’t a big fan of the green tones.  A quick switch to B&W and some judicious cropping and I could enjoy those shadows and dark tones even more.

The image just seems to draw you in the more you look at it – an emotional side effect of a good abstract image.  The darkness of the tones almost forces you to look more deeply into the image searching for the “tone boundaries” moving through the image.  Anyway, I like it, I hope you do too.

Camera specs: Camera 5D Mark II fitted with 24-105mm lens at 102mm, F 4.0 @ 1/30 second, ISI 6400.  Enjoy!  -David