No, not B&W - Colour indeed:

[AB26]

This might look like B&W but it is colour.

Any comment welcome.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Andre,

Leaving aside the 'colour shot of a B&W subject' aspect

A thought provoking image - and here are my thoughts/observations;

Shot with a Nikon D200 at 80mm, f/11 and iso 200 (shutter speed was 2 seconds, but that's almost irrelevant given the static scene and very likely use of tripod)

The bit of sharpest detail appears to be 50% into the frame from the top, so I suspect this is presented here uncropped and you used the centre focus point.

Due to the subject distance/angle of view, that has led to the foreground keys (at lower image edge) seemingly being more far more out of focus than the distant keys (at upper image edge) - I'm not sure this would be my choice.

Personally I think I would have either used a 'lower in image frame' focus point, or cropped after capture to achieve a more balanced use of the Depth of Field (DoF) by effectively focusing on a nearer set of keys.

As shot, I might crop the lowest, or even as much as the lowest two keys, off.

However, at time of shooting, I might consider focusing in a different place with respect to the groups of 2 or 3 black keys and the position this gives to the foreground framing - and explored other choices of focal length and subject distance (hence perspective) to achieve a similar 'keys only' composition. Then there are also the choices of lateral and vertical viewpoint and the effect these have had on the diminishing perspective. You may well have done all this yourself and shown us the best subjective result.

This makes me wonder why I (apparently) view this image from the bottom up (closest first?), instead of top down, which led me to the above views on place of focus and DoF and being so concerned at foreground keys being so out of focus.

Like I say; thought provoking!

Cheers,

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Andre.

I was wondering what made you take this shot. I think we all know what it is, but wondered if there was something special you could have done. As an example, depressed a few keys to form a chord of some kind. You could have pressed the keys on the right side out of view of the photo. I also wondered if the image might be a bit more dynamic if you angled the shot so that black keys (sorry, dark coloured keys) were not so vertical.

[MrB]

It could be described as an enigmatic image, being both low key and high key.

Philip

[Mike Buckley]

The "color" is immediately evident in the reflections on the black keys.

[Bobobird]

Excellent.... somewhat abstract and somewhat not. Cool.

[TonyW]

This is an interesting image. I downloaded it and converted it to black an white. When I compared the two, the original white seemed definitely off-white and the original black became brown, both much softer than the real black and white even though the difference in colour was quite small. There was a lustre to the keys that was not there in the pure black and white.

I found the perspective quite disconcerting, if I am allowed to use that word in this context. The keys are much narrower as you go down the keyboard, the white keys showing are almost a constant length and the black keys get longer. It actually took me a few seconds to see what the picture was (and I have been playing music all afternoon). I think it was the perspective that confused me.

[Wavelength]

Nice; liked

[AB26]

A thought provoking image - and here are my thoughts/observations;
Like I say; thought provoking!

Cheers,

Dave,

Thank you for spending so much of your time on this image of mine.

I always leave the EXIF in tact to give others the opportunity to see what I have done. That way it is always easier to do proper analysis and give a more informed opinion on an image.

I tried a few options, doing it in different ways with different points of focus. Then I thought of an image of a very famous lady photographer and the comment about her images. The focus point was chosen with her images in mind.

I would have liked a bit more DOF but going beyond F11 might make the image to soft.

Very good constructive comment, it is much appreciated.

[AB26]

Ken ,Philip, Mike , Bobo, Tony and Nandakumar – thank you for viewing and commenting.
I am pleased that the perspective is called “disconcerting”. Many a classical masterpiece of music can also be “disconcerting”. Listen to Beethoven and you will understand what I mean.

“Enigmatic”, another word I like, describing the image.

Thank you for the comments, it is much appreciated.