Diptych: Cracks in Time: A Senior Black + White High Dynamic Range Diptych by Elena Razgonov (2016)

In my diptych, I attempted to express the idea of turning faults into advantages or something otherwise good. The first image was an hour glass which I photographed at a high shutter speed with a 50mm lense. My goal was to capture the grains of sand in motion. The second was a broken bottle being covered with a cloth. The second image also took on an ambiguous shape which I though looked like a moth or another insect. I then rotated this image to create balance in the diptych and to create visual tension.When I look at the diptych as a whole I see tension between something considered perfect and complete and something broken which wants nothing else than to disappear. In the second image there’s a certain kind of serenity seen in the use of negative space while the hourglass is far busier. This is meant to represent how singular one feel when they seem like outcasts. The hourglass meanwhile portrayed how time is fleeting and as a result perfecting is fleeting as well, existing only at the will of time. Each side has something that people crave, perfection, calmness. Some want to be considered the epitome of beauty while others prefer being something quirky. They exist in the same space but different worlds. They don’t necessarily belong together, but this how they’re found. You see one because of the other.

If I were to do this over again I would photograph the second image during the golden hour to better capture the details. I took far too late and I was missing the light which would bring out the flaws in the glass. I had trouble taking this photo as broken glass can look fairly generic and in low light it doesn’t look visually interesting. I opted for using a spray bottle to add more reflections and refraction to add dimension and appeal. To improve it I would bring up the contrast to balance out the negative space and create further visual interest and appeal. For the first image I would play more with scale and positioning. I would maybe even incorporate the shadows cast more because they had a strange pattern in the reflections which could add both meaning and visual interest to the piece.