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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Nine: Composition -- putting it together > Shopping Mall, Iquique, Chile, 2003
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27-DEC-2003

Shopping Mall, Iquique, Chile, 2003

This image places us within an improvised shopping mall comprised of very small shops in a quiet corner of one of the hottest, driest cities in the world. The Atacama Desert is just inland, and its dust coats everything in town. These merchants have raised a canopy over their street, hoping to ward off heat and dirt. This canopy gives the photo great depth perspective, as well as a flow of pattern to lead the eye where I wanted it to go. Sunlight pours through the canopy at an angle, creating a ribbon of white light down the middle of the dirt street, leading the eye deeply into the heart of the picture and stopping virtually at the feet of a woman who stands before a tour agency, probably waiting for customers. The receding row of doorways along the left side of the picture also draws us into the photo. Everything leads us to the patient woman and the signs that surround her.

Canon PowerShot G5
1/250s f/4.0 at 17.6mm full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Guest 25-Jun-2005 06:51
Great gallerys, excellent image/s~!
Phil Douglis21-Aug-2004 19:31
Thanks, Jim, for adding your remark about the effect of the tonalities here on meaning. Since I am displaying this image as an example of effective composition, I did not get into the role of color in my descriptive comment beneath the picture. (I discuss coloration and its effect on expression in Gallery Twelve.) However, since you have brought the subject up here, I do agree with you that the row of golden doors, as well as the coating of soft brown sand on the street that has blown in to Iquique from the nearby Atacama Desert, lend a feeling of warmth and peacefulness to the scene. The cool blue-green color in the striped awning overhead takes the edge off the effect of the scorching sun that has left its white hot mark in the sand below.
Jim Chiesa21-Aug-2004 16:51
Phil, I can only agree with your very interesting description of this image. Wherever you look the eye is systematically guided to the focal point being the woman. The overall tones are mellow which contributes to bringing a placid feel.
Phil Douglis30-Jul-2004 04:43
Thanks, Henk, for being the first to comment on this image, which happens to be one of my favorite examples of implied depth perspective. I like the name you give it -- "perspective induced eye-travelling" -- because that's exactly what it is. And you are right -- there are many ways to get the eye to move through a picture with the help of perspective control. I demonstrate one of those ways in this example, as well as other methods in some of my other examples in this chapter.
oochappan30-Jul-2004 01:38
Comparehttp://www.pbase.com/image/28196320
I call it perspective induced eye travelling. Eye-travelling is one very important element in a photo for me. There are differant ways to achieve like this for instance.
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