Thanks for your reactions. They actually square pretty well with my own.
The amarylis picture, which everyone liked, is an easy picture to approach. It's called White Christmas (because of the star). It has an obvious, foreground subject - the amarylis - but a not so obvious subject which was, "How little color can there be in a color photograph?" You get a touch of warmth from the star, and the acidy green from the flowers, but that's about it. The title is a bit of misdirection because the only thing that wil print up white is snowcover, out of focus and out the window. Hence I like nihraguk's comment about the "ghostly" feeling of the image, because the subject is there and not there at the same time.
The second picture is about the conflict I feel between the random mindless ugliness of our built environment and the irresistable urge to make sense of it. So the signs are all faced the other way, but compositional elements, tending to echo the frame, impose a sense of order. I am also noticing the dialog which the spindly trees are having with the man made environment. Are they supposed to be there? Or there by default? Do they represent nature breaking through, or nature at bay?
The third picture is a sketch, really. I have outside my back door a privet hedge which is occasionally illuminated by floodlights. The effect at twilight is particularly engaging. The intention was simply to try to record how the light looks like when the floods come on before the sun goes down. The subject was again the junction of the built environment and nature, this time in the form of one late fall evening and a particularly vigorous privet. I wanted the pic to be whip sharp, so I'll just reshoot. After I do so through a number of seasons and accidents of light and weather, I may not know anything more than I do now, but I may have seen something I will never see again.
Thanks for your observations. I think I have realized something else. I'm not convinced that intention is the best way to approach picture making, in spite of that irreversable moment when the finger trips the shutter. The decisive moment is too frequently an accident or an artifice. There might be a way to use the camera, though, to ask a particular question - "What's it look like?" - even if you have to ask the smae question over and over again.
These are not great photographs,in any conventional sense, but they aren't bad questions.
It's been nice talking to you.
