Week 4: Texture

Window Detail, UC Irvine.

I snapped this shot while chatting with Pam in the Prop Shop on campus. We were talking about a show, and all of a sudden I jumped out of my seat and started shooting. For this post, I had thought of grabbing things with different textures from around my apartment, and then shooting them in the dramatic golden hour light of early evening — but when I spotted this I immediately responded to its texture. The relationship between light and texture can exist between a beam of light and the surface it hits as well as between light and shadow. In this shot, afternoon light crosses through a tree outside the window, outlining the blinds with veins of branches and leaves. What I love so much about this image is how the outline of a tree, when in front of light at such a low angle, produces a mottled and distorted texture on a surface. In theatre, we strive to recreate this sort of texture through the use of gobos. This image has an added bonus with vertical lines of light breaking up the image even further, creating contrast. This breakage of texture creates a sort of tension within the stillness of the image.