Feliz Paloma – Angyne, Toronto (2007)
Outside of a high school band recital or symphony performance, a French horn is not a commonplace object.
It’s certainly not something you expect to see ostensibly being tooted by a young woman standing nude on her balcony framed against backdrop innervated with faux brutalist high rises and an ocean of murky cloud cover.
The angle of the balcony ledge appears higher on the left than the right. (I do not think this is due to the camera not being level–a similar if not far less successful version of this scenery can be viewed here; it appears as if Angyne has been cut out of another photo and then super imposed over the scenery, honestly; I have no idea why that image is featured in the portfolio while this one is excluded. Anyway, note that in the other photo the balcony ledge is equally askew.)
Strangely the tilt counter-intuitively contributes to the photo. You’d expect your eye to slide from left to right but the magnificence of the sky as well as the hint of the building you can see in the distance just above the rightmost edge of the balcony ledge strangely balances the composition.
Initially, I thought that perhaps there should be some sort of fill light to bring Angyne out of the shadows a little bit. However, on second thought I think that all that needs to have shifted for this to work 120% as is, would be for the horn to be positioned slightly higher so that the shape of the horn is further emphasized against the backdrop.
Acetylene Eyes 