Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do.
Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free try lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. In this particular advanced English lesson, we're looking at advanced adjectives and these advanced adjectives are used to describe images in particular, photographs, paintings, whatever it might be. So advanced adjectives used to describe images.
And I've got a dozen of them, that's 12, okay, and I'll go through them and hopefully I'll be able to give you an example of when you might be able to use them. First, powerful, a powerful image. Well, a powerful image is something that really leaves a lasting impression on your mind.
You could see a powerful image of a old lady of 85 or 86 standing in front of a police man dressed in battle uniform when there's a demonstration on the streets and the woman marches forward to confront these police officers to ask why are they blocking the route and why can people not demonstrate peacefully on the streets. So that would be a very powerful image.
I saw one many, many months ago about an old lady confronting riot police in Belarus when the people were demonstrating on the streets there. So that would be described as a very powerful image. Humorous. Well, something humorous is something, of course, it's going to make you laugh, it's going to make you smile, and it's going to give you a good feeling.
So, for example, a cartoon in a newspaper, so it could be a satirical cartoon that is taking some fun or poking fun at the government or a prime minister or a president or the king or the queen of that particular country. And if it's very, very humorous, then we will always laugh and we can remember these type of cartoons. And these satirical cartoonists are really, really good. They're very clever. They see a situation and they apply a cartoon to that.
Now, of course, what I find humorous, you may not find humorous, and what you find humorous, somebody else might find a little bit insulting. So we have to be really, really careful as to what we do, that we don't do it intentionally to insult somebody, but we just look at the humorous side. So a cartoon. Raw, R-A-W, raw, so a raw image is something that's not properly or fully processed.
So if you go out and you take a photograph or beautiful or what you feel is a beautiful landscape view of mountains or valleys or rivers, then in its raw state, it probably looks good, but perhaps it needs some added photoshopping or some touch-ups to make it look really, really perfect. So raw in its raw state is the first state that you happen to see. Number four, meaningful. Well, something meaningful is something that gives you some idea that there's something behind it.
There's a reason why this particular image has been taken and meaningful. So you need to feel that it's not just done for the sake of hanging on a wall to make you feel warm, but there's some deeper meaning to the photograph, some deeper meaning to the sketch, something meaningful, something that has got some depth to it. Okay, well another adjective, and it's two words together, well composed. And when we write it, you'll see it here on the screen with a hyphen, well composed.
So if you're looking at an image that's well composed, you could imagine seeing, let's say, a country scene. Okay, you've got a cottage, you've got fields, and you've got mountains as well. So it's well composed if you've got the picture of the cottage at the beginning or the front or the in the forefront or the foreground of the painting or the photograph. So it's in good proportion and then are surrounded by a green field with a fence.
And then in the background, you've got these mountains, maybe capped with snow or lined with trees. So everything is in specific proportion. So we could describe that as a really well-composed picture or well-composed painting. So everything is in proportion rather than people in the painting that are a little bit out of shape compared to the rest of the items or articles or things that are in that painting or picture.
So something well composed, there's good definition to the picture, good definition to the photograph. So you can see very clearly your little cottage surrounded by roses, behind it a field or the fence and whatever's growing in the field. And then at the very back in the background, you've got the range of mountains or the mountain range and the peaks are capped with snow. So that would be a good description of something that is well composed. Number six, something that's iconic.
Well, we can all think of images that we have seen over the years that are iconic. And they're iconic because they last with us a very, very long time. I remember the iconic picture of the captain of the English football team being carried by his colleagues when they won the World Cup in 1966, the first and only time that England won the World Cup.
But it's an iconic photograph because he's holding the trophy in his hands, he's being carried aloft by his teammates, and it's, for me, an iconic image. Okay, but there could be other iconic images. There could be photograph of the Twin Towers, those of us who remember them before they were unfortunately blown up. But then these are iconic images, or indeed the unfortunate situation when they were blown up. That image will last with me for a lifetime. So that, again, is something iconic.
Number eight, or number seven, I think. Sorry, number seven, evocative. Something that's evocative is something that gets your emotions, gets you thinking about it. So lots of images may not be evocative for everybody, but they can be. So something evocative gets you thinking, gets you feeling. So perhaps it's a flood and there are rushing waters coming down the streets. So that really gets you thinking about it.
Perhaps it's the remains of a thunderstorm or a huge hurricane that has come through a part of America and has left houses and properties destroyed. Those can be quite evocative images. These are all something that gets you thinking, gets you feeling, gets you wondering as to exactly what happened next or what would you do in that particular situation. It gets the blood flowing.
In some cases, it can get the blood boiling a little bit and people can get a little bit angry or aggressive about certain images. Cluttered. Well, cluttered means there's a lot to something. There's a lot of mess. Your bedroom is cluttered or your office is cluttered. You've got papers everywhere, books everywhere, clothes everywhere. You can't really move. So a cluttered image is something that's not so clear.
So I often look at these paintings by Picasso and to me they would be very cluttered. There's lots of things in it. Looking at images of a goat or a trumpet or a piano or whatever and they're all combined in one particular painting and so there's a lot happening in those particular images and to me they're extremely cluttered. So I like things to be a little bit more defined, so cluttered. Bleak, a bleak image is something dull, something that shows that there's no warmth or it's very wild.
For example, a photograph or a picture of a wet December day when the wind is blowing, the rain is coming down, there's no color in the sky, there's a grey-gray background of dark clouds, there's no flowers because it's the winter time. That would be a very, very bleak image. Yeah, okay. Or indeed, an image of a overcrowded city where there are just lines and lines of lines of tall buildings of these high-rise apartment blocks all grey and dull against the grey sky in the background.
That to me would also be a bleak image. Something that's repetitive or a bit repetitive. So image is something to repetitive means over and over again or perhaps something that we have seen time and time again. So there's no difference to it. It looks the same as something else. So a look at a beach or a line of traffic or something on an ocean. This could all be a little bit repetitive because we've seen these images time and time again. Number 11, flawless.
Well, flawless means without error or without mistake, something almost perfection. Not sure what the definition of perfection is for everybody because it means different things, but a flawless image, something that you can't really find fault with. So when you look at it, it just looks like pure beauty, a flawless image. For me, when I look at a flawless image, that iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe, that looks to me flawless. It's perfect, the perfect smile for somebody, yeah, flawless.
Or a picture of the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower, flawless. It's a perfect structure, no problems with it, no difficulties, really good, interesting, exciting architecture. And then finally, something that looks elaborate. Number 12 looks elaborate, an elaborate image. Well, it's something adorned with jewellery. So a photograph or picture of a crown, you know, a queen or king's crown would be very elaborate.
Or if you saw the funeral of the Queen of England, there were lots of elaborate images taken from the Queen's funeral when her coffin was lying in state inside a Westminster Abbey surrounded by these soldiers who were dressed in a certain military attire that was suitable for the occasion. This could be described, in my opinion, as extremely elaborate.
So the coffin very elaborate, the queen's crown very elaborate, and the uniforms worn by the different soldiers from different parts of the military. Again, extremely elaborate, but these uniforms were particular for that particular occasion. Okay, so we have the 12 advanced adjectives that we can use to describe images. And let me give them to you one more time.
Powerful, humorous, raw, meaningful, well-composed, iconic, evocative, cluttered, bleak, repetitive, flawless, and finally something that looks elaborate, something that looks elaborate. So you've got 12 particular adjectives, advanced adjectives, that are describing certain images. So you can have an idea in your own mind when you visit an art gallery, you visit a museum, you're checking through different images that you see on Instagram.
All of these, you can use these adjectives to describe those sort of images as what appears or what comes to your mind when you first look at them. So practice them. In fact, what would be a good idea is to look up the internet, look at certain images and see which of these words you could use to match with the images that you see and practice it that way. And it's a good way for you to remember them.
And if you have any questions, you need some additional help, you need some more information, well then just come back to me, www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Very happy to hear from you. So this is Harry wishing you goodbye for today. Thanks for listening and watching. And remember to join me for the next lesson.