Vincent Van Gogh and his artwork

He may not instantly come to mind as relevant to my studies but, in reality, he has produced work which considers the same ideas I am looking at right now, around a hundred years ago. Feelings about the expanse of the sky at night are presented in his painting in just the same way as photographs present this large amount of space.

The first painting I want to look at, is this one called 'Starry Night over the Rhone'. The Rhone is a large river which flows through France among other European countries, so it is a very important water supply for the area.

Photo sourced from: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com

The town shown in the foreground is called Arles and directly above the town is the 'Big Dipper' a constellation which is Normally found in Northern facing skies, although Van Gogh has used his artistic license to move it to where he wants it.

Unfortunately I haven't got an 'artistic license' when it comes to shooting my photographs; I have to shoot what is present in front of me, it is only later that I can make adjustments to content and composition using Photoshop, which I discuss in the 'Photoshop and the stars' blog entry.

Anyway as for composition in the photograph, he does use the same type of rule that I wish to use in my upcoming photography, which is to have a close initial foreground interest (the people) to grab the viewer's attention, which then feeds the eye to the town in the background,then up into the sky to see the amazing stars above. This is exactly what I want my photographs to contain; a pathway which leads the viewer into the sky instead of jsut a flat image without any depth.

Here is another painting by Van Gogh, called 'Starry Night' which was produced in 1889 showing star trails in the style of Van Gogh. It is a truly amazing painting with lots of colour, even though it is showing a night scene which is normally void of any colour. Again he has used foreground interest in a village to capture the viewer's eye, which is then lead up into the sky where stars are presented as large yellow circles of colour.

Image sourced from: http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html

I can learn things about composition by looking at how Van Gogh has composed his paintings and also the messages which are conveyed in each of these particular paintings.
They help me to understand how to keep the viewer interested and create a pathway as shooting an image of just the sky above, would not have sufficient content to keep the viewer interested for long, although a photograph of the stars would be good, it simply wouldn't have any place on Earth and wouldn't make a comparison between the very social planet on which we live and the lonely area above us which is space.

Van Gogh is pushing the idea that the night time is just as colourful as the day time, which is why I insist on shooting colour images at night even when many may think there simply are no colours to capture. I completely disagree with the normal statement as there are colours to capture at night, you just need to be patient and allow them to appear as the softly lit foreground comes alive with colours.