MMM01 Entry - Mr Darcy

[Mr Darcy]

My entry in this competition:
http://www.dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33889

Theme 1: …moth NOt too many around at this time of year, but I raced the spiders to this one...


Theme 2: Now, I'm colourblind, but you can't tell me this isn't … mauve


Theme 3: …mayhem Not too much mayhem going on round here. This was the beat I could do


Theme 4: …milk

[Big Red]

glad to see you managed to get them all

[ATJ]

Greg,

Well done on finding a moth. I think the scratched glass takes away from this image and it probably could have done with less contrast.

I thought mauve was the easiest of the 4 to find subjects. I like the idea that you went with something a bit different, but I still think it is a bit of a cop-out going for the word rather than the colour, although there is a bit of mauve there.

There certainly is mayhem in that shed and you have exposed it well.

The last one is good for the subject, but the background (the vertical line and the red object) take away from the image.

[Mr Darcy]

Thanks Andrew.
The moth was less than cooperative. I saw it on the window, but by the time I had grabbed the camera and got outside, it had climbed to the top and refused to come down. I balanced on some packing to get the shot, nearly falling through the window in the process. I cloned out a lot of the clutter on the glass, but left some for context. Most if it is actually spider webs. We encourage them because they keep the mozzies down.

On the book, I deliberately exposed the back with its shades of mauve. I treated it mainly as an exercise in selective focus though. I learned a lot. Even at f1.4 the books on either side were in focus, so I carefully arranged the books so that the ones on each side were not visible.
I do wonder how many actually managed to get mauve. It is quite a specific colour, not purple or lavender or pink. but hey, we all know I am a (colour-blind) pedant

As for mayhem, I don't really think it qualifies (I wouldn't vote for it on those grounds). I hope others disagree though Technically mayhem is an injury to an opponent to prevent him from attacking you. An example would be a sword cut above the eye to effectively blind your adversary. In the colloquial sense it seems to have taken on what should more correctly be called pandemonium (e.g. "there was mayhem on the roads this morning" - maybe journalists can't spell such long words ) An action still seems to be implied though, not just the static chaos of my shed.

On the last one, the vertical line is actually the milk being poured in, and was part of my concept from the start. I did think about a black ground to make it clearer, but I liked the ambiguity delivered in this shot. I do need to think about my backgrounds more though. It is all a learning process.

[ATJ]

As for mayhem, I don't really think it qualifies (I wouldn't vote for it on those grounds). I hope others disagree though Technically mayhem is an injury to an opponent to prevent him from attacking you. An example would be a sword cut above the eye to effectively blind your adversary. In the colloquial sense it seems to have taken on what should more correctly be called pandemonium (e.g. "there was mayhem on the roads this morning" - maybe journalists can't spell such long words ) An action still seems to be implied though, not just the static chaos of my shed.

So... why was it included in the list of themes?

[Mr Darcy]

So... why was it included in the list of themes?

Good question.
I don't have a good answer.
I asked for ideas from various sources, not just here. I don't recall where mayhem specifically came from. I added them all, without vetting them in any way*, to a small database, then wrote a random theme generator to pull out four themes. For this month only, I limited to themes beginning with "m" {If FirstLetterIsM(strTheme) then KeepTheme()**}.

When I saw the themes, I thought "Erk" but decided to go with them anyway as others might be inspired by something that would daunt me, and we would all learn. As it was, I felt that both you and Shane captured the concept well, but I felt yours needed the text explanation for it to make sense, so I went with Shane's in the end. If you had had someone trying to get past the doors, I think you would have nailed it. This would have been akin to the chase scenes in countless movies where the hero slows the advancing villain by placing obstacles in his path. Certainly up there with the intent of mayhem, if without the physical violence.

*Actually, I got a list of some 300 Emotion words from a psychologist friend. I felt they would sway the list too much and cut them down to about 10. I didn't fancy coming up with a photo for defeated, depressed, despairing, dismal all in the one month.

**In reality, I filtered them using SQL a priori, but you get the idea.