 |
| original image |
 |
| reframed image |
I have always been drawn to this photograph for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I think that the content of the picture is shocking, and therefore powerful. The picture is humorous at first, but becomes more and more haunting the more you look at it. It is funny at first to see a little girl in such an adult position. The longer you look at it though, the more intense it becomes. The look on the girl's face becomes increasingly unsettling. She appears to be completely grown up, although still very young. She already appears to have such a large amount of attitude and indifference for such a young age.
The content of the picture is supplemented by certain visual techniques that aid in eliciting an emotional response from the viewer. The high contrast between colors in the photograph heighten the visual intensity of the image. All of the whites are very light, while the blacks are very dark. The dark background creates a sense of uneasiness. It also plays with the idea of space, because you cannot tell exactly how far back it spans, creating ambiguous space.
The first image has a very different feeling than the second image. Image number one, the original image, contains more lines and shapes than the second image. The ladder draws the viewer's eyes upward, as it creates vertical lines. The scale of the ladder serves in making the little girl appear even smaller, and gives the viewer depth clues, showing them how far the subjects are from the horizon line.
I chose to reframe the image in the way that I did because I wanted to see how the image would change without the ladder, and without the splash of white in the top right corner. The reframed imaged has a completely different vibe than the original. I think that the second image does not have nearly the power of the first. It does not employ the rule of thirds as the first one does, and is therefore not as visually interesting and stimulating. Without the mysterious figure on the ladder, you lose some of the tension of the original image. The viewer cannot be sure what exactly is going on in the background, which adds to an overall sense of wonder and enchantment.
