Blog Post 9: Arrangement of the Vectors

Through further analysis of my chosen picture of a barn overlooking a valley in upstate New York, I found out more interesting points. Starting with arrangement, I noticed a few very key items. For instance, the point of the roof line on the visible side of the barn is nearly perfectly centered in within the photo. This also falls under cropping, but I believe this is a key focal point of what the audience is meant to see. Though the roof itself is not a very bright, lit up object within the picture, if it is framed by itself, it can be viewed as a main dividing line between the barn on the ridge and the massive expanse of the valley below. Again, with arrangement, the silo below the point of the roof line is also directly aligned with the photo’s center. It may seem slightly off because of the shadowing on the left side, but it is unmistakably also meant to be a visual focus. The centering of an object within the photo is important to draw the viewers gaze into the picture. By seeing the roof point and silo, the audience will quickly fall to one side or the other and either take in the barn or the abyss in the background. For instance, in the photo below, the photographer did a similar thing, also in the New York Catskills:

The photographer took a picture of a small manufactured home and put it to one side. Notice that the center of the picture is also right where the hill begins to slant downward. The viewer will either look at the main object of the picture, or fall off to the right side with the hill.

While obviously there are no people present in the picture, there are still vectors of attention displayed by other means. One point would be the open barn door entrance that makes the audience look off toward the right hand side of the picture, especially as the picture has been cut off to leave the viewer wondering what else is out of sight. Another could be the roof point itself. If imagined the silo and roof crest put together, it looks remarkably like an arrow pointing upwards toward the pristine blue sky. The ground sloping downward into the distance also brings one’s gaze down the side of the hill if the frame is on the ground only.

Using all of these logical examples, it shouldn’t be too difficult to see a pathos type result come to fruition. With the open feeling of a wide country farm and the bright blue sky with ample lighting to see most everything in the photo, the picture could quite possibly have some very deep meanings. One such possibility could be that of religion, noting the “arrow” pointing toward the sky. Another could be one of industrial and developed versus open and untamed by the way the photo is split nearly in half with one side being the barn and the other being a wide open country scene. Either way, the picture is most definitely more than what meets the eye at first glance.