Author: Melisa WuLin

The photo I chose was written by Michael Kenna. It’s called “Central Park Reservoir, New York City, USA, 1998”. When I saw this picture, I first thought of an idiom —— the frog at the bottom of the well. Through one of the small iron nets, I saw the opposite side of the coast and thought it was the size of the whole world. It seems that people who have been bound by a small place for a long time think that this is the whole world, as a feeling of innocence and ignorance. However，If you feel this photo carefully, you will find that maybe I am a self-righteous person. Because after I felt this photo seriously, I thought of longing for this word. People trapped on this side are eager to reach the prosperous city on the other side and experience the noise of the busy city. Eager to escape from this narrow place, to reach a wider place, and look forward to the future. Of course, this is my feeling and imagination. This is not the real fact of this photo. But is my real feelings and thoughts. Maybe the photographer just wants to express a kind of loneliness. If the world is so small, it may not be lonely.

The three of the formal elements from the Steve McCurry video that are most important in the photo that I selected are Leading Lines, Frame within a frame, and Symmetry. The leading lines are used because there is a line between land and seawater, and there is also a horizontal line between trees and buildings. These two lines form a parallel line, so this composition can be leading lines. Frame within a frame is using elements of a scene to create a frame within your frame. The photographer used a small grid of iron mesh to frame the object（the building） into a prism. I think symmetry is used because taking the space between the two tallest buildings as the middle line, you will find that although things are not completely symmetrical, the proportion of negative space and positive space is the same.