A View of My Guitar

Trying to get away from the landscapes and architecture I tend to photograph, I decided in the Fall of 2009 to photograph objects in my apartment. I thought about what I would photograph by looking at the variety of textures, shapes, lines and colors around me. I took close-up photos of pillows and rugs, of pottery and wooden furniture, of books and manuscript pages. I also took some photos of my cherry colored Harmony guitar. For me, the shape of a guitar lends itself to incredible photographs; the head and tuning keys, the long neck with its many frets, the pick guard, the sound hole and the bridge all easily become visually stimulating shapes, especially when photographed at unusual angles. In this case I aimed my camera at the lines printed around the sound hole while facing towards the guitar neck. For me, the lines draw me in and carry my eye up and into the image. The strings moving across the upper left corner add to the picture's interest, as do the reflection of the strings in the guitar body. From a distance, the dark oval shape created by the sound hole, the black and white lines wrapping around the hole and the red-orange color of the guitar make for an eye-catching composition.