Spring - first draft photos

I was one of the unlucky ones who got given the season spring! As it's now autumn I thought I was doomed but surprisingly the photos I managed to take turned out quite well. Since the weather is the most opposite to spring it could be, there isn't a single green leaf in sight, no spring time flowers and no cute baby lambs roaming around, I had to improvise so I focused more on the colours that spring brings rather than the other more obvious elements.

I decided to take a slightly abstract approach to photographing 'Spring', I did this because not only would it be hard to capture litteral photos of spring, because it's autumn but also because they look quite different and interesting this way. To achieve this result I layered 3 photos of flowers using photoshop and changed the opacity to allow each photo to shine through, some more than others. I'll be honest and say there is no artistic reason for the layering effect except for the fact that I thought it looked good. Some could argue that it's not enough for photos to just 'look good' and that it needs some symbolic meaning or something, usually i'd disagree with this but in this case 'looking good' might not be enough. The problem with the layers is the psychedelic effect it gives and how this could confuse people and take their mind more towards the distortion and away from the spring aspect of the image. In order for this photo to meet the brief, it has to scream out 'spring' and although the colours and the subject do this, the layering ditracts from this a little too much, making the viewer think 'why has she done this?'. When I re-shoot I will keep in mind that my priority is 'spring' so will therefore not take a photo which has overshadowing elements. I still want to go down the abstract route but will try and allow the 'spring' side of the photo to shine through more than the abstract side, so it's a matter of either toning up the 'spring' or toning down the 'abstract'. After getting past the 'why is this photo all distorted?' I think it's a lovely spring looking image!

In the feedback session I thought the responses about this photo from the other students were very interesting. Someone said this photo looked like the view from inside a flower looking outwards and someone else said the dark patch in the centre looks like the silhouette of an insect. Hearing these mixed ideas made me realise this photo is very ambiguous. I didn't try to capture something which looked like the view from the inside of a flower nor did I try to capture the silhouette of an insect but by people recognising these things, I know this photo is a successful one. In terms of this photo represeting spring, It's very abstract so I wasn't sure if a stranger would automatically think 'spring' when looking at it but in the feedback session the things people seemed to get from this image were things related to spring which makes me confident enough that this image fits the brief to an extent which makes me happy!