The Dancing Japanese Anemone

Photo by Marcio Faustino.

I feel attracted to this three Japanese Anemone because the way they are distributed in the photo feels like there is a certain dynamism in it, as if they are moving like in a dance. I think what enhance the most this visual feeling is the background.

Intentionally or not, any element on images that form visual lines suggest trails that works unconsciously for our eyes, such trails, when well composed on the image, makes it more comfortable, and so pleasing, for our eyes to run and explore the elements of the image. After all our eyes are in constant movement scanning quickly all the details of the visual that we perceive as a whole in our mind. It is as if lines suggest and lead the direction of our eyes so it doesn't have to "jump" from one element to an other in a rough terrain.

The flowers stalk in this photo feel doing just that and it may be what they do in most photographs of flowers and plants; point the direction of the main element to our eyes. Here we have the three flowers distributed in the image and the many stalks point to the direction of them. Even the very blurred stalk on the left of the photo is doing such job pointing to our eyes the direction back to the flower on the bottom of the image.

The diagonal lines on images often suggest dynamism; that things are moving, that things are happening, and so they are alive. I guess the different direction crossing by the lines formed by the stalks is the reason it feels to me the flowers moving like a dance.

There are many other reasons to contemplate the photo, such as the color contrast and shapes textures, but I feel the description I gave above is what makes this photo in particular stands out.

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