The Silhoutte: Intersecting Art & Photography

Branching off (no pun intended) of my correlations between art and photography, I captured this silhouetted moment at Princess Point of a squirrel climbing in the trees. Although the squirrel was quite silhouetted in reality due to the clouded lighting, making it hard to spot out the exact species, I believe it is a black Eastern Gray Squirrel. The original image was not too far off from this, I brought up the white value and down the blacks so that the silhouette was bolder. Further, I cropped it so that the squirrel took up more of the frame and so that the branch along the bottom which the squirrel climbs upwards on is the focal point. It was in this editing process that, as I cropped the image, I began to view the branch as a skeletal hand, the small branches stemming from it as the fingers. The form reminded me of the Other Mother’s fragile hand in the film Coraline. The squirrel climbing upwards begins to form a story of adventure and escape from one tree to the next. Having the moment silhouetted really allows the viewer to focus on natural forms versus the physical qualities and details - which is something very different from the intention behind my usual photographic work.

This piece is considered under the art photography lens as it bends the traditional intentions of animal photography in favour of an artistic vision. Combining my passions for photography and the visual arts has given me a new perspective on how the two fields can easily intertwine with one another. Having previously kept these two hobbies separate, through editing and taking this photo especially, the realization that my knowledge and experience of both can intersect to create imagery has been quite eye opening. As an illustrative artist, I also feel a stronger sense of relation to this photograph in comparison to my others due to my ability to conceptualize a narrative vision within the frame.