Composition and Baseball

(Sept. 12, 1962)

There are many elements that make up any given visual text, and there's plenty of room for diverging opinions (disagreements, even) on composition choice and analysis.  KvL's work points to some tendencies, however, in the way that visuals are read and/or meaningfully created.

I shot/took/edited/created/etc.ed the following two images to fit the purposes of my slooowwly developing EM concept.  The plan is to memorialize/celebrate the work by Charles Schulz who died in 2000 (and others, like Bill Melendez who died this past year), focusing on how Peanuts is not a comic strip relegated solely to the confines of the strip framing, but rather contains elements that point to truths in our own lives - using characters that we can identify with to portray a high level of modality, even if not in the typical way we think of modality.  I'll primarily talk about the second image below in relation to the continued KvL reading.

(Photo 1)

(Photo 2)

Let's work through some of the KvL ideas...

1) Salience:  The most salient element (in Photo 2) is the fence.  It is the closest to element to the viewer, is sharply in focus (an important point given the shallow depth of field) and contains high contrast due to the highlights/shadows. 

There is a second element, however, that competes for salience once you see it - the Peanuts characters hollering from the dugout bench.  Patty and Linus (not Peppermint Patty, mind you... this is the Patty from the early days of the strip eventually to be phased out) become salient once seen because they are "out of place" in some way - i.e., they are comic strip characters in a photograph of the real world.  Their salience is aided by the vectors running towards them - the fence line and the bench line.  They are obscured (though partially framed) by the fence, though, which means their salience is challenged and may be interpreted differently by viewers.

The close-to-center placement of the subjects also helps make them "heavier" (202) and thus more salient.  This can be seen even more dramatically in Picture 1, where Charlie Brown and Lucy are clearly the most salient elements, with Schroeder being only slightly less because of his non-centeredness.

2)  Information Value: 

Given-New (181) --- There is little on the Right, making for little New meaning.  The most salient element (at least initially) is in the Right, but the image remains empty behind the fence.  The subjects (Patty and Linus) are Given (though only slightly).  The goal is to make them appear Given.  This is in order to challenge the initial reaction of "hey - they don't belong there!" (which is also why the picture is in black and white - to try to and meet them closer on their initial plane of modality).

There is also a leftward vector created by the direction the subjects and looking and hollering, inviting (Offering) the viewer to take a second look at the Given - perhaps a "did I miss something?" moment.

Ideal-Real (186) ---  There is not a very distinct horizon in Picture 2 (unlike Picture 1's "divine lights" from above generated by the stadium lighting).  Picture 2 is confined largely (save for the upper left corner) to the Real, boxed into the dugout.  This is important given that the characters may be hard conceptually for a viewer to ascribe to the Real of a naturalistic photograph (a point of potential Contestation --- KvL aplty point out such a possibility in reading images).

3)  Framing:  Patty and Linus are framed partially by the dugout, partially by the depth created by the fence.  This creates an "inside" and "outside" that potentially complicates our notions of Given and New, maybe even the Real and Ideal.  The fence is a convoluted frame, though, in that it is partially see-through, allowing for Patty's face to be framed within the fence, but Linus to be further obscured.  In Picture 1, by contrast, Lucy and Charlie Brown are framed simply between two light poles (potentially even framed by a triangle created by three of the poles).  The pitcher's mound may even serve as the bottom of that frame.

And finally...

With this in mind, it is important to note that these comic strip characters have been taken out of their "typical framing" of the strip (204).  This is to allow them to be situated in a new context - framed by naturalism (in our world, as opposed to theirs).