Weekly Challenge – Kitchen

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The dPS challenge this week was “Kitchen”.  As someone more interested in concepts than objects, this theme threw me a little.  As someone with a deadline for an essay, I decided I wouldn’t take up the challenge this weekend.

But … I’ve been thinking about another dPS post this week – how to capture a story in one image.  Narrative painting has a well established tradition, but when the TV presenter explains how each person and object in the large painting contributes to the story, I was always left wondering why I didn’t see those connections.  Why did I need to be told what the story was?

The answer turned out to be quite simple.  The painting on screen was from a time, place and culture that was unfamiliar to me.  I could not know what the painter intended without first studying the history and culture in which he (mostly, but occasionally she) lived.

That leads me to another question …  in our internet age, is there sufficient sharing of contemporary cultures that narrative photography will not require the same verbal explanation as the paintings of old?

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Todays’ submission to the challenge was a serendipitous moment at the kitchen sink this morning.  There is nothing particularly technical to report about the image’s creation.  So I decided to experiment with the ratio.  Which ratio would create the story I wanted to tell through this image?  I was looking for tension.

The 1:1 aspect ratio shown below created an image that seemed too balanced.

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A 4:5 ratio added a little tension, but was just plain boring.

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I settled on the panoramic ratio of 16:9.

The drain seems to be falling towards the bottom of the image
while the spoon stretches towards the top.  The image is tearing itself apart?

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There is a tension, or uncomfortable relationship, between our aim for cleanliness and the mess that cleaning creates.  All this energy just to move dirt to a different spot.

The story I hope is a little more obvious … Pulling the plug in the kitchen sink usually means the washing up is done but, when the suds cleared, it became obvious I wasn’t finished yet.