Today’s picture comes to us from Oklahoma! Cobalt and I went on a walk to work off some of that delicious turkey we ate for Thanksgiving and stumbled across these train tracks stretching out as far as the eye can see. It made for some really neat shots. Anyway, the focus of this picture was to play with an idea I learned about in my Creative Digital Photography class. Our teacher suggested that pictures composed to draw your eyes from the right of the picture to the left of the picture (as in my picture here) are viewed as “negative” or “offputting” for anyone who reads from left to right (i.e. Western culture). Take for example, the famous painting The Scream.
On the other hand, a picture that draws your eyes from left to right is “positive” or “pleasing” for the same folk. We all seem to really like the waves in this painting from the Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji collection. Of course, you might guess then that if you read from right to left, then a picture drawing your eyes from right to left would be pleasing while a picture that draws your eyes from left to right would be offputting.
What do you guys think? Is that true here? I do kind of feel that this picture makes me a little uneasy. I’m not sure why really. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the train tracks and but for some reason they just don’t seem right. Maybe I’m just biased because I took the picture…