Concepts. Syncopation and Transition

When I studied design, my favourite task was conceptual composition or the art of composition (the only branch of modern art I can actually tolerate), which is also the basis of creative photography.
What I love most about illustrating a concept is the intellectual game that it provides — as with solving creative puzzles, it takes a lot of lateral thinking, and the more disparate the ideas you manage to associate seem, the smarter you look.

Syncopation — a shift of accent in a passage or composition that occurs when a normally weak beat is stressed, in other words, a shift of attention to the secondary subject (in this case from the object to its shadow).

Syncopation. Shadow of a glass vase. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Syncopation. Shepherd. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

This one could do as a kind of allegory of Charon's boat — the ferryman who conveyed the dead to Hades over the river Styx.

Light and shade. Voyage. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

I once had to create a composition that would represent a transition from 2D to 3D space, with blurred boundaries between dimensions, as a coursework project. I used some kind of physical process to illustrate the point and created a scaled paper and cardboard model (I even won the first prize). But this picture could also serve the purpose with much less effort.

Transition. Console
(© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

A cross section of a palm trunk shows an interesting transition of textures —depending on the angle of view the fibres create distinct, shifting into each other patterns.

Perspective view.

Palm tree stump cross section
(© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Side view.

Palm tree tissue fibers
(© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)

Front view.

Palm tree stump texture. (© LightColourShade. All rights reserved)