08 July 2018

The Saint Johns Bridge: Framing and Color

3553.
Now that I was finally on-point, it was time to play with framing and the effects thoughtfully provided in-camera to the Canon Powershot S-100 by the manufacturer.

This first one is something of an "expected" compostion, good for just a nice picture you can enjoy and lose yourself in. Landsape.


I've zoomed and cropped to give you a good look at a couple of features of the local geography. Notice the grove of evergreens there at the middle of the left side of the photo? That's a large park on the west side of the St. Johns neighborhood called Pier Park. And, despite the proximity to some of the working Portland harbor, it's not named for a bit of nautical architecture, but a city commissioner, Sylvester Pier, who was Parks Commissioner from 1919 through 1923.



Above the right end of the grove you can just barely see the cone of Luuwit ... Mount St Helens. The predominance of blue light and white cloud makes the volcano kind of soften back into the background. On a truly clear day you can just sew Washington's highest peak, mighty Tahoma ... Mount Rainier.


Just a few feet up the trail from the viewpoint an opening in the foliage provided an additional framing opportunity so I grabbed it. The strong vertical lines of the bridge's towers lent themselves aptly to a portrait orientation.

Still, the photo doesn't do justice to the way the bridge's architecture dominates the visual field. This is something you have to experience in person. Framing and composition, as with Wy'east, only gets you part the way ... a great deal of the way, but there's nothing like the human experience.

And, the next two photos take advantage of the monochrome filters on the camera to produce dramatic images with emotional content for me. I recall seeing similar monochromatic images as station-ID cards on local TV when I was just a runt, so this takes me back to Silverton, when my only idea of what Portland was, was on the TV.

Black and white:


... and an unexpectedly-intriguing blue tone, which works even better in portrait.


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