By Scott Shephard

I posted a color version of this photo to my blog years ago but today I was inspired to offer it in black and white largely due to a challenge by one of my facebook friends. As I've said before, color changes not just what we see in a photo but it also changes how we see it. And that is the first meaning of the word "elemental" in my blog title today: black and white images help us see and consider the compositional elements of a photo.

The other meaning of "elemental" goes back to the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, who said that everything was made up of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. All four of these are important but fire is certainly part of the essence of our lives. The sun is fire, the power that makes most electricity comes from fire, our cars and our airplanes run on fire, and the furnace that is keeping me warm right now is also a fire. And that's a short list. . .

Wow! All of that from a black and white photo of votive candles. I should say, incidentally,  that saw these candles in a pedestrian vestibule in Zagreb, Croatia, a few years ago.

Canon 5D 1/500s f/10.0 ISO400 105mm