Consequences: Your picture allows a symphony of eye movement and consequent meanings!
The hint of clothing at the top of the original was distracting.
Asher, I'm not sure what you mean by "what are the consequences". Oftentimes your questions elude me, as you speak and think on a much higher plane than I.
Maybe I'm way off the mark, but if there are consequences, they'd be defined as a better understanding of what may make an image better. If not, I'd certainly like to understand your question better.
When you made all the many decisions to build your "socks" picture, there were already consequences.
What might these be? Well, there are to me several ideas in this concept. Your array of stockings are not, after all, arranged for sale in a store or against the sunset sky on a washing line! Rather these are socks on the otherwise bare legs of young girls with thighs showing, but pelvis and above removed. So there is an implicit, albeit transient, forbidden or
censored element. The second figure, with no touch of further covering to her bare thighs, could imply total nakedness. O.K., so such ideas are quickly repressed as fast as they emerged, but they were there. What happens is these first notions are overwhelmed by the array of so many socks and black shoes. Now one's imagination is utterly caught up with endless possibilities, as we join the demanding movement of elements in an arc from right to left.
From here, we have another glance and we see that each set of socks is different, the eye now moves, not continuously, but stacatto, progressing in abrupt steps to interrogate each figure for relative importance. We have to re-calibrate rankings every time we move as each figure is individual and demands attention. Then we find the outliers asking for a visit from us too: The feet in the same direction and those away from this, like the pair on the right where we see the back of the calves. What different groups of friends there might be up there in the girls' minds. Now we have touched on the
social consequences of the groupings.
But the socks don't have a monopoly for out inquisitive attentions; there are the shoes! So many shoes; some bright shiny reflective leather others dull black, all competing for our time and yet strengthening the clockwise arc of movement.
The consequences of altering your photograph, as you made it, is that the nature of the drama the observer can experience is changed. The initial temptation to consider this a tad erotic is pushed and even banished from the mind. Making a particular set of legs more important and clarifying the picture, can paradoxically decrease our need to engage further with exploration. Such are some of the consequences I refer to.
Asher
Now I still believe that one has to consider the relative importance of every unit of a composition and not rely on what appeared in the latent image after framing and pressing the shutter. To me, outside of work for clients in vertical photographic markets, if the picture is delivered
as framed and
as imaged by the camera's particular physics, the imagination of the shooter is perhaps not used to its fullest potential.
