Life-Taking Life-Giving Sword
Artwork for a Gallery

Like many others, I suspect, I was becoming increasingly worried about using other people’s images for fear of infringing copyright rules. That’s not a dig at photographers, by the way — if you create something special, you deserve to be recognised. To be on the safe side, I decided that I would only use images created by me or people I know from the offline world.
I bought a second-hand Nikon 5100, which I’ve been getting to grips with, and got stuck into my local woods for shots. The problem with placing poems on photos is finding the right font type, letter size, and colour to the picture without clashing with it. In the case of Life-taking Life-giving Sword, I had three ideas to juggle with: the forest, the sword, and the poem.
Initially, I had no clue how to merge the samurai pic (that’s my good-looking self from eighteen years ago, by the way) with the forest. Once I knew what I wanted to do, I had to figure out how. Note to self — look for “opacity”, not “transparency”.
Then, I had to find the best way to lay the poem on top. That’s when I was struck by the idea of a thin grey veil. Creating a partly transparent plinth wouldn’t have entered my head if I had not altered the opacity of the sword image.
I think I’ve done a decent job — I don’t believe in faking modesty — but I’m sure that as I get better, I will look back at this attempt again and recognise the flaws that I can’t see now. It’s certainly not bad for a first attempt.
Let me know your honest thoughts because I’ve created the image for an exhibition. It doesn’t have to be perfect — I am a poet, first and foremost — but it has to be good enough. I don’t want my lack of design skills and experience to ruin an otherwise good poem.
Thanks in advance.