This week, Tina Schell asks us to focus our cameras on an idea. The concept of harmony is wide-ranging from an artistic perspective, personal interaction, an architectural design element, or even a higher plane of coexistence. You can read Tina’s challenge post here. Reviewing my gallery of photographs, I can find a few that demonstrate some basic principles that Tina suggested. In the opening photo, the sameness of color, lighting, and shape in the design of the Colorado State Capitol building rotunda is an example of the principle of harmony in architectural design.

Tina points out in her post that colors that are close to each other in the spectrum create a harmonious feeling. Even the ugliness of a strip mine can exhibit a color harmony that softens the unattractive remains of a played out mine.

Another definition of harmony focuses on a team working together to accomplish a goal. In this case the horse and rider are working in harmony to win the barrel race.

The team of Clydesdale Horses is world-famous. Those beautiful animals have two goals whether they know it or not. They must work in harmony pull a ceremonial wagon adorned with a corporate logo. As we all know, the primary goal of this team is to sell Budweiser Beer.

For my last example, I focus on the harmony between the natural world and its inhabitants. In this case, a Rocky Mountain Sheep finds harmony in life in the high Rockies. Before you think I have some sort of death wish to climb mountains and get into the face of a wild animal, this image was captured at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The ram, a taxidermy specimen, is set in a multimedia environment consisting of a beautifully designed foreground of natural materials and a back wall mural featuring high peaks somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Of course, I could make some comment about musical harmony but it’s hard to show audio harmony in an image. I’ll just leave it at that. Thanks to Tina for a great challenge this week.

John Steiner