Hotel Potrerillos (Argentina)

Piscina, Hotel Potrerillos #2. Near Mendoza, Argentina, 2016

The pool at this beautiful, recently renovated, hotel in the foothills of the Andes Mountains made for a wonderful photographic subject, set as it is among the towering, arid, mountains and the lush, green, vineyards.

Tomorrow we will attend an outdoor wedding here (assuming those clouds don’t dump loads on us). What a choice location!

For today’s photography lesson…

I think this is a good example of color as a useful compositional element. However, I also think the images work well in black and white–but, IMHO, the color versions have a very slight edge.

What do you think?

A color version:

Piscina, Hotel Potrerillos, #1. Near Mendoza, Argentina, 2016

Now, the black and white conversion:

Piscina, Hotel Potrerillos, #1. Near Mendoza, Argentina, 2016

Another color version:

Piscina, Hotel Potrerillos, #3. Near Mendoza, Argentina, 2016

And now the black and white perspective:

Piscina, Hotel Potrerillos, #3. Near Mendoza, Argentina, 2016

Note how your eye tends to move over the photograph in different ways depending on whether color is included or not. For me, the main subject in both B&W examples are clearly the elegant white poolside chairs. In contrast, when color is present, the eye tends to dwell much more on the pool itself and the nearby tiling.

And one more bonus photograph from inside the Hotel Potrerillos, this one in monochrome as color was not at all a necessary part of the composition. I think the image would be stronger if there were, say, a face looking down or a hand on the rail at the very end of the spiral-a main subject and a place for the eye to come to rest. So, once again, I have set up a very nice stage, but left out the actor:

Escaleras, Hotel Potrerillos. Near Mendoza, Argentina, 2016