To begin with a confession: I like breaking the rules… I should not say that, not as somebody working in public administration and not as a German.. So I will qualify this a bit: I like breaking the rules from time to time and as long as nobody is harmed. Even that is not easy in Germany where many people seem to like rules for their own sake and not because they establish a certain mechanism (e.g. how to file a complaint), to prevent harm (wear masks) or to protect the weaker (stop at pedestrian crossings). Taking the last example there is a certain development even in Germany that when in the middle of the night there is no car one might cross the street even at a red light !
When I lived in Tunisia rules were rather a recommendation. Especially when driving… This is hard to grasp at the beginning, but surprisingly enough after a while you can handle it and it works more or less. I must confess that I did not always like it, but what I liked was the flexibility. If necessary people would stop to let you cross the street even if it was them who had priority (I tried that later back in Germany and was almost run over by a car..). I believe breaking the rules once in a while can bring new insights, makes you risk something or leave your comfort zone. It also provokes reactions by others. Often those reactions are negative and it makes me wonder why people like to stick so much to rules if in that concrete situation they are so obviously unnecessary? Is it because rules give a frame to the cosmic chaos? Something to cling to when everything around you is changing ?
Woods on fire
Turning to photography – every lecture about composition teaches the rule of thirds, the golden ratio etc. Those are important to create a certain balance and harmony in a picture that pleases the human eye. The same is true for other rules: take a short shutter speed to have a sharp image. Use an open aperture for blurring the background in a portrait etc. etc. With these rules you can make good pictures. Sometimes boring ones.
So inspired among others by the photographers Freeman Patterson and Guy Tal I decided to break the rules a bit while going out on a lovely spring walk swinging my camera. Yes, swinging! I used the small Fuji F100X – it is safe to swing it around. It was an experiment since I did not want to take another nice flower picture. My hope was to express the feeling of spring: lavishly blossoming flowers, abundance of colours and scents, greening of the woods. What came out of it was very surprising. It feels like an exhibition of impressionist paintings! Join me on that walk by clicking on the images to view the gallery:a
Enjoy the spring time!
Petra