Rob,
A most haunting unsetteling image. But I can't quite say as to why this image makes me feel that way...
Peter
Hi Peter,
Yes, I know what you mean. It's what happens to me this way all the time, in that I wander around aimlessly, and something just reaches out. I can't predict where or when, I can't manufacture it.
For example: Wednesday is market day here in Puerto Pollensa, and the place fills with hundreds of people thronging around a smallish square filled with all the crap that you can imagine as well as some nice farm produce, much of which is not actually locally grown at all, but comes for wherever stuff's in season or the feezers big enough. The perimeter of the trading zone's got a lot of cafes doing good business, and you can't find a seat because they are all filled, not with towels but with asses. Now, I pass all of them a couple of times and see nobody worthy of a snap; nobody. That's hard to believe out of so many. Then, as yesterday, boredom lets me sneak past the flowerpots set up to divert people into a regular way-in to a certain bar, and I find an empty spot. (Being thin allows for some of these tactics.) After a while, a pair of girls finds another table and I watch over my coffee. One animated girl in heavy sunglasses seems quite attractive at fifteen feet, and I eventually decide she's worth a couple of images.
I get home, stick the stuff into PS and in moments wonder what the hell I'd been thinking about. Dumped.
In other words, things reach out, but they are often just chimeras.
As I have said before, Saul Leiter's a hero, and one of the simple, deep things that he said, and that I paraphrase here, was this: if I knew what was going to be good, I wouldn't have had to take all the others.
And then there's the viewer perspective. In your shot of the Uber thinggy, the first thing that hit me was the lovely girl on the poster on the right, with the low-cut back on her dress. The same shot, and others saw something quite else.
In the end, I think we react not to what's just
physically there, but to something else that triggers what's inside of
us rather than what the shooter is trying to catch that suits
his game plan.
Rob C
P.S. I think that the experiences/reactions we are both talking about constitute one of the factors that strongly influences my belief in a God and a hereafter. Take that away, and it would all be worthless baggage and Nature, in her ruthless efficiency, wouldn't have saddled us with it.