Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Shifting Visuals

r.graham.barrett's picture

I'm particularly fond of Haverford's Nature Trail, having spent the last couple of years regularly taking advantage of it for runs, visiting it for class, and walking it with my friends. Besides the  conveniences it offers and its proximity, I've enjoy the Nature Trail largely for the changing views it provides as the year progresses during the varying seasons. This one shot of the nature trail (which Haverford wisely decided to use for advertising the trail) particularly captures this concept of the ever shifting visuals of the trail, since the pink blossoms are only on the tree for a relatively short amount of time (a couple of weeks at most). Since the blossoms are there for only a brief time, I would choose to foreground them because of their brief appearance and thereby I want to give them acknowledgement that would last longer than the blossoms in actuality do. To me the actual physical trail serves as the background here because its far more visually rewarding to notice the natural green of the leaves, or the pink of the blossoms rather than the boring gray of the trail, so the trail gets pushed back visually when looking at the image. The borders of the shot I feel would be everything 20 feet from the trail because its within this range that the majority of the trees and plant life that the trail prides itself in passing by exists. Due to the ever shifting visualization of the natural environment surrounding the trail, as the year progresses, I chose the spot I plan on revisiting as a a bench on a hill near the trail (relatively close to the location where the shot is taken, just out range from where the trail goes of camera in this picture) which overlooks the top Northwestern corner of the trail, so that I can have an excellent view of a large portion of the trail as the seasons affect the trail along with my view of it. 

Groups: