What a dare this one was at first. Because of the lack of light I tried long exposure photos without a tripod. After a few tries, the idea of getting a streak of light with the tables in front of me and the lights in the background arose.
The idea
At a first glance, it's a rather simple composition of what looks like an abstract painting. The tables that are aligned to create the frivolous stroke of light to the vanishing point on the left, the mix of white and yellow colors with its purple overcoat, and the recognizable architecture are all reminiscent of a painting done in the streets of a very animated city. It almost feels like New York, as if the tables were the cabs, the frame in the top left was the Brooklyn bridge, and the people were pedestrians running to their next destination endlessly seeking to optimize their path, and yet, it is not.
Like spurts of paint, the common and real objects of everyday life become metaphysical and estranged to us. Everything is mixed together, shapes make no sense any longer, light posts seem to have grown tails of photons, and people don't appear to be present, merely passing figures in a still space.
Upon closer inspection, we can start learning about this place, its immutable infrastructure, its passing residents, and the life that is born every evening as people come out of their enclosed offices to meet with one another.
Yet, we may never truly see it all. It's a strange place, the colors don't match, there is a feeling of melancholia, as if we should all know it, but we don't.
And then, he appears. The figure, the statue, the form of a man standing incredibly still looking afar. No humans are really distinguishable but this one. Hands in his pockets? Dark skin or simply shadows darkening a white tone? Where is he headed? Why is he so still and yet clearly in movement? He looks as though he is walking away from the light of the "Brooklyn bridge" but with a tranquility that is somewhat reassuring. Maybe he is just passing by in this miasma of people, or maybe he grabs our intention too much, and makes us loose sense of the bigger picture.
The technique
The composition here is very interesting. I did of course build it knowingly, but never would I have thought that the blurred aspect would marry so well with the L shape the light makes at it reflects the environment throughout our viewpoint. That is the main idea to keep in mind here: without proper composition, a photo like this makes no sense. Even when going into a creative photography, you must never forget the basics of composition. Everyone can forgive a poorly lit or costumed subject, but no one will forgive a weak composition, because that's what leads the audience. The eye is trained to see clear shapes first and to rest in the middle or on a light spot of the picture. As photographers (artists in general), our goal is to tell a story with the movement of the audience's eye. It's important to guide it knowingly throughout the highlights and shadows.
This picture is composed of three planes, the light in the background, the medium values in the center and the dark values almost engulfing all the space, especially the upper right corner. The eye, therefore, is most likely to rest in the first table that is sat in the middle and reflects a lot of light. Then, as the audience gets accustomed to the environment, people might tend to look for the vanishing point on the left side where light is emitted. Finally, the eye takes a broader approach and looks at the entire picture to form its idea of the piece.
The movement of the camera was crucial to get what I was looking for. The difficulty of this photo really relies on the osmosis between camera movement (vertical, horizontal, rotation, translation...) and camera settings. The first tries were barely blurred since I hadn't lowered the shutter speed enough. The next were too bright because I had to kept the iso setting too high.
It was also a question of the direction of my movement. Did I want to give verticality or did I want to spread my surroundings to the sides? There is a reason for both, but in this case, horizontal movement gave me the most satisfaction because of the shape of the chairs and tables. My translation elongated them, and created a stronger feeling of surrealism.
The lights make my jitteriness more tangible as you can easily see the sinusoidal movement I made while moving to the sides. A tripod would have been much better here in order to make the movement more smooth, but the shape also give it personality in my opinion.
Tools
Camera: Canon 1300D
Lens: 18-55 mm
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