Farm – Palouse, Washington. June, 2007
There appears to be a photographic language in which a well accepted convention is used to indicate space, e.g. foreground, middle-ground, and back-ground. The back-ground being the farthest point, or the top third of the picture, is often brushed with a blueish-haze to indicate the great distance from the viewer. This technique, though most effective in black and white, becomes not so satisfactory in color particularly when the fore-ground and the mid-ground are in brilliant color.
Why? The distance is the distance, and is always treated this way(?) But, why than do you build up such an expectation through the fore-ground and the mid-ground with such a masterful and Gauguin-esque symphony of color and form, only to end in a Renaissance convention?
To be fair, all photographers, I mean first rate professional photographers, do this. One that comes to mind now, though not by Michael, is a view from atop a hill, in Asia, looking down a terraced rice paddies filled with water, early in season, with vivid greens and yellows and browns with a cluster of thatches below, all descending to a valley below of more sky reflecting rice paddies and ending in a line of trees to the mid-ground, and, yes, blue-haze and indistinct beyond, as if the top third of the picture did not matter. Don't tell me that's the way it was, not with Photoshop under your belt!