Dumbcane Leaf Detail (Dieffenbachia)
Beavercreek, Ohio
"The eye should learn to listen before it looks." - Robert Frank
This is perhaps a departure from my typical outdoors-oriented portfolio. Taken indoors with only sufficient window lighting, this was an exercise in photographing an indoors house plant; a tropical variety informally called a "dumbcane." It was said this plant was fed to slaves to make their throats swell (the leaves are poisonous). So it is also not a pet-friendly plant either!
Overall, this image is a saturation of various ideas I had in mind. Never meant to be a show-stopper photo session, I was just toying with the gear. I practiced using "soft focus" to make a rather light and airy photo. While 95% of photography should be tack sharp, I reserve the other 5% to abstracts and unusual focusing techniques such as this. And really the only way to achieve this look is using manual focus, perhaps with a flash or strobe. I challenge you to look and see, study that subject hard. What makes it tick? Give me (or the viewer) a reason to want to look at it too.
© 2018 Ryan L. Taylor Photography. All Rights Reserved.
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