Street Lamp and Metal Fence - Black and White Minimalism

Minimalism as Less Elements

Black and White Minimalist Photography

Buy a Print

This Street Lamp and Metal Fence Photograph falls under Minimalism as Less Elements

The Only elements here being a) The Street Lamp and b) The Metal Fence.

Yes, I have kept it real simple. 

Black and white minimalism works best when the subject is already bold and clean. This street lamp against a flat grey sky, with a metal fence in the foreground, is exactly that kind of subject.

Take the colour away and what you have is just pure shapes. A vertical street lamp pole, a horizontal railing bar, and it's diamond spikes repeating across the frame. 

Now here is where the shot gets interesting. If you look carefully, the street lamp appears to grow out of the metal fence itself, as if it is just another spike in the row, slightly taller and more elaborate than the rest. That was the intention here.

I mean it's like a trick shot that I generally don't capture but I want to so I did.

I got this by bending down on my knees and shifting left and right until the base of the lamp visually merged with the fence line.

This is what I call the creative look up approach in minimalist photography, except here I used a low angle rather than a straight upward look.

The sky became the background here and the fence, the foreground. The lamp sits perfectly in the gap between two fence spikes nailing the composition.

Looking up minimalism is one of the more underused minimalist photography ideas. Most photographers shoot at eye level out of habit. The moment you change your physical position, the entire visual relationship between elements changes.

An ordinary street lamp on an ordinary fence becomes something that makes you look at twice.

Also note that the fence is deliberately out of focus in the foreground. This separation between the sharp lamp and the soft fence creates depth in what is otherwise a very flat graphic image.

It also reinforces the black and white minimalism of the shot because your eye goes straight to the lamp, traces the pole downward, and then registers the fence as a supporting frame rather than a competing subject.

I clicked this shot while attending the Jaipur Art Summit. The creative energy of the event clearly got to me because I ended up on my knees on the pavement moving sideways like a crab until the frame locked in.

If you are exploring minimalist photography ideas, try this the next time you see a lamp post near a fence.

Get on your knees, move sideways and watch how the relationship between foreground and background changes with few centimetres of movement.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Some of my favourite shots have come from the most awkward positions. This is one of them.​​​​​​​​​​

Thank and Regards

Prakash Ghai