My favorite photo of the day is a prime example of negative and positive space.  If you aren’t familiar with the geeky art terms: positive space is the area occupied by your subject matter and negative space is the rest of it. Your positive space can be spread out, take up most of the picture, or be more contained and small, like my friend, Mr. Ducky, here.  Negative space doesn’t have to be empty space, necessarily.  It can just have less importance, detail, etc. than the rest of the image.  Some people like to minimize negative space.  Those people would probably have cropped in real close around the duck and allowed him to fill in most of the frame.  I tried this and didn’t like it, so I left it as it was.  The subtle patterns in the water held enough interest for me to want them in the picture.  The lovely thing about art is that it’s all about preference.  I like it this way, and I’m right.  If you prefer it with less of the water, you’re right too.  Yea!

The downside to ruling the boat: less time to photograph.  In fact, I took 75% less pictures than our first visit to Horsetooth Reservoir.  I did a pretty thorough job the last time, however, so I didn’t feel it was too big a loss. I did see two or three opportunities I’d have liked to have taken, but such is life I guess.  The stuff I did get to do, like get in the water twice (and with Bessie too!  Pictured above in her stylish doggie life-preserver), hang out with my dad, and – did I mention steer the boat?-more than made up for a couple of missed photographs.

It seems, however, that water will be the theme here on Photodork for the next few days.  I have a couple more installments of the afternoon on Horsetooth Reservoir to share and yesterday I photographed the overflowing banks of the Poudre River.  Anything I might even consider snapping a shot of in the next 24 hours will probably be soaked unless its indoors.

No matter what though, they’ll be a change of weather and scenery on Tuesday as Dylan and I embark on a road trip to Albuquerque with his mom that morning. We’ll be there for the rest of the week and I am excited for the prospect of new things to aim my camera at.  If you’re familiar with the area and have suggestions of places to see, I’d love to hear them.

It was a beautiful day for both boating and photography.  The clouds managed to keep the sun from being too intense, but it was still bright and warm.  I had to coat myself in sunscreen twice, but really, there was no avoiding that or the light of sunburn I sustained anyhow.

I’m actually not one for landscape photography, but as that’s what I had handy I gave it a shot (or 142 shots, to be precise).   And as I shot the afternoon away (and ate hot dogs and chips and brownies and jumped into water that was a bit too cold…I don’t want you to think I was attached to my camera the whole time), I thought a bit about the different reasons that we photograph.  There is commercial photography, journalistic photography, artistic photography, as well as keepsake photography.  Well, that’s what I call it.  Most people take keepsake or souvenir photos of the important moments in their lives.  Birthday parties, graduations, vacations, and gathering of family and friends all fall into this category.

Of course, the categories can mix and mingle.  Yesterday I shot for both artistic and keepsake reasons.  Part of this was because its really hard for me to turn off the part of my brain that is constantly looking for an assessing situations for photographs.  What I was really interested in though was remembering the afternoon and journey.  While the images may not make it onto this site, there are images of my dad and Bessie and of Dylan because when it comes right down to it, that was the part of the day that mattered, spending time with people (and dogs) that are important.