The large and small of photography

All photos @ Anthony R Socci

Enotah, as Brasstown Bald was called and respected by the Cherokee, who traditionally took the highest places as holy. Their legends tell the story of a flood that killed all people except for the families that landed on top of Enotah in a great canoe. 

My trek to the top, approximately 359 years later, was not by great canoe, but by car and finally on foot. It’s a beautiful place and if you haven’t visited Enotah recently, you should really make the trip and be sure to take your camera! 

In creating the images for this article, I wanted to show the juxtaposition of “large” versus “small” and this photograph does exactly that. If you’ve been following my column, you are by now, well aware that I’m a great fan of Pythagoras and his wonderful theorem which gave us the Golden Section, or Pi for all you mathematicians. 

I’ve placed the main structure at the base, 1/3 up from the bottom, the tower at 1/3 in from the left side, and the flag obediently took its place in the 2/3 position from the left. (Am I good or what?) But that’s not all! Besides defining the extent of my humility, I’ve accomplished not one, but two (count ‘em, two) objectives when I made this image.

The tower, “large”, dominates the vertical position on the left and compliments the flag, “small”, on the right. The wind cooperated with me by blowing in from the left and I recorded several successive frames until the flag unfurled to my liking. The flag put the finishing touches on a right triangle (3-4-5) to complete the photograph. 

Was I satisfied? Of course not! When I got back to my digital darkroom, I wondered how this image might look closer to sunset. No problem. I simply duplicated the photo then selected “Image”, “Adjustments”, and then moved the “Hue/Saturation” slider set on “Master” to about 65% which gave me the second photo “made with the rich warm tones of sunset.” How cool is that?

Comments? Suggestions? Here I am at socciphoto@yahoo.com