These are from a winter's day at the beach.Your C&C will be appreciated, as usual.
Cheers,
Cem,
Your choice of B&W for both pictures fits in so well. You have lighting, composition, texture and form that wouldn't be improved by color. These are pristine beach views, so it must indeed be especially cold or early.
Cem Usakligil: A Day at the Beach #1
In this first picture the girl on the left is such a strong element. As a point, she stops movement and in this picture, the lines make one want to move. So there ends up with a see-saw of interest and inquiry from her to the church-like building on the upper right. I like being able to use my imagination, for fresh installments each time I visit a picture. This photograph allows me that. Qudos!
Cem Usakligil: A Day at the Beach #2
Here, again, the work is meticulous. The strong horizontal black lines pull us away from the slow curvaceous incoming foaming waves. These elements work very well, dark with light, hard with soft, still with movement, solid with ephemeral. But somehow there's a pull from above which, IMHO, wants us to see more of the fences and test the sky. So what's going on? Arrays of parallel lines are to strong a pattern for the mind to simply ignore and let go by. We have to
keep exploring. Maybe these are pathways that other hunters might be approaching on. We have to be alert, check and recheck since we do not trust that it's safe.
By contrast, the foreground is open, accessible, observable in one glance and is empty! Here the large soft tide forms generate tranquility, as does the horizontal form.
So my suggestion, crop this picture just to provide the 3rd line of wood posts and you will have an extremely long, tranquil beach scene that has no distractions to the peace and time for contemplation it provides. One can now even hear the soft tides washing the sand!
An alternate is simply to have these as a diptych with a thick horizontal white line separating the lower part from the upper. Although, for all intents and purposes, you might find the lower picture, now so strong that the upper part might seem hardly worth having. This can only be decided by interviewing large enough prints respectfully put on a white wall.
Thanks, Cem, for sharing these two remarkably disciplined and satisfying pictures. These are not uplifting in themselves, but each constitutes a neutral stopping off place where one can find peace and plan great things for oneself, family and friends. This is an interesting class of images to introduce to us! These are, in a way, museums, places to "muse". I'd add the term, "
exploratorium", since here, one is free from distractions and can then explore one's own imperatives, assumptions, hopes, wishes and resources.
Asher
The sky and the lighthouse with a 4-6mm of sand makes another separate element. So I'd try a triptych, after all.
