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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Eight: Using symbols and metaphors to express meaning > The angel, Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2006
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24-SEP-2006

The angel, Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2006

This image is symbolic because its subject, the angel that crowns the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, is a symbol in itself. The image of the angel Moroni is commonly used as an unofficial symbol of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It faces eastward, where in 1823, it appeared to Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr. and told him about golden plates containing Mormon gospel that were buried a few miles from Smith’s home. Smith translated the plates into the Book of Mormon and returned them to Moroni. Earlier, I had photographed the angel blowing its trumpet from the top of the temple (See that image by clicking on the thumbnail at the bottom.) This image is more abstract, because I photograph it from behind, as it moves away from us. Using a 334mm telephoto focal length, I tried to add tension and energy to the gilded figure glowing in the early morning light by pulling the viewer’s eye to it through a screen of softly focused trees.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50
1/320s f/5.6 at 70.6mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis01-Aug-2007 00:40
Thanks, Xin, for becoming the first to comment on this image. As for why people are not leaving comments here, I have 1,700 images on pbase now, and it is hard for people to go through them all to find the new ones, even though they are always posted at the beginning of my galleries. People are reluctant to go to all 47 of my galleries looking for new pictures. But you found it, and that is important to me. I made it just an hour or so before you and I met in Salt Lake City. The sun was beautiful that morning, as you recall. And yes, the blurry leaves seem to create a frame within a frame that projects the golden statue into a world of its own.
Sheena Xin Liu31-Jul-2007 05:40

This is an amazing shot to me, Phil. I wonder why people are not leaving comments here. From the aesthetic point of view, it is so dreamily beautiful. The collection of those blurry leaves bring the subject to the front, and to another dimension, such that the golden angel looks really beyond the mundane world.
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