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Cecilia Lim | all galleries >> travel >> shanghai > Aiming High
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Sep 2007

Aiming High

I made this image to connect the circular theme of the sun with the Oriental Pearl TV tower. It was only later that I discovered there was a speck of dirt on my image, slightly above the tower to its left. On closer observation however, I was shocked to learn that this speck was actually a silhouette of a perfect geometrically shaped butterfly kite hovering above the tower.


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Cecilia Lim12-Aug-2009 14:54
Thanks Phil - I appreciate your comment about burnout. Coming from a graphic designer's background, burnouts are of no concern for me because what the form, colour or shape communicates is more important to me than how it is executed. I deal with both 2-D and 3-D imagery and I am completely comfortable with the sun being represented as a flat, round white disc. For me, expression in photography always takes precedence over technical skills. It is the voice and thought that matters most to me.
Phil Douglis04-Apr-2009 19:03
Some speck of dirt! A magical image, but it was not luck that created it. It was your decision to use the hazy orb of the sun to mimic the vast orb of the Pearl Tower that caused you to move crop the image tightly, and thus reveal the high flying kit. It reminds me of the legend of Icarus -- we find ourselves hoping that the kite will not be seared by the sun's heat, so evident in the burned out area next to it. You don't fall victim to a purist's auto-ban of burnout, either -- in this case, the burned out sky between the sun and the butterfly kite is critical.