The theme for the February photo contest of Ricohforum is ladies/men behind the counter. So I had been looking for the right scene. The other day when I had a chance to stroll along an open market with the GX200, I came across this strawberry kiosk which had exactly what I had been looking for to make my submission.
(I could not resist putting the pig head chop on the shade. So I kept this for fun and picked the first photo below for the contest. This one is hilarious)
Since most contestants submitted photos of such men and women with interesting facial features of some sort, I planned to take a photo of the subject without showing his or her face. An image with a simple message and a sense of humour was what I had in mind.
A composition technique in photography immediately sprang to mind: superimpositing objects in composition.
Why Superimposition?
Photography is basically a planar art form to reflect a three dimensional world, meaning that the spatial relationship between objects in a photo is weak. In general, therefore, any defective crossing of one object over another should be avoided in your composition. But there is no rule without an exception.Superimposing objects in a photo can give a lasting impact on viewers. What may be dull and common otherwise is expressed in a lively, uncommon way to give a more intriguing and thought-provoking image. The new take on any usual scene can easily draw attention of viewers, challenging them to use imagination and associative power to interpret the image. Therefore, this technique is best for revealing what is more to the image than meets the eye.
Why the Lady?
The strawberry lady's head with the superimposed shade is not just hilarious to me. It actually reminds me of the masked face of a suspect in the news report, or the shaded face of a person-in-the-know being interviewed on TV for some insider's information. On coniditon of anonymity, to put it simply. But our curiosity urges us to steal a peek of the face behind. These are exactly the appeal, allusion and sense of secrecy I hope to put in the image.
What gives? You may ask.
The lady committed no criminal offence. But she was lying. This is the harvest time of strawberry in Japan. The topnotch ones are being sold in big supermarkets here, in exactly the same package as you see in the photo. But there the lady was leading her customers to believe the same about the strawberry she was selling.
So, this is how she succeeded in misleading the customers appeared in the photo above:
"Check it out, Mister. The strawberry is as good as you can get from Japan. Two boxes for just fifteen dollars."
Well, in fact, these are at best third-rated produce from goodness knows where. The real ones are sold in big supermarket at much dearer a price which is one box for a hundred and twenty eight dollars.
Evey sensible person had some reasonable doubt about the cheap price for the strawberry of a size of a golf ball. So the lady pressed on, "Hey, fresh from Japan. You've got to taste'em. This is so cheap and you'll have nothing to lose. Buy'em, taste some and say for yourselves."
While saying so, the lady was already ready to put the boxes into a plastic bag.
Most men, I think, are not good at making strong refusal at this stage to, for one thing, ease the siege of embarrass-ment. So, there she won. Two boxes of strawberry the size of a golf ball for fifteen dollars.
Comments