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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Two: Travel Incongruities > Body Language, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, 2007
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20-FEB-2007

Body Language, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, 2007

Shooting the dawn at Zabriskie Point is a photographic ritual. Yet even though they are all shooting the same subject here, each of these photographers uses unique body language. By shooting them from behind, I abstract the scene and remove identities, emphasizing only how they stand before their cameras. Some bend, others hunch, and one struggles to adjust her tripod before the moment of light she is shooting vanishes forever. The scene is incongruous because none of these photographers realize that they, too, have become the subjects of a picture. They are too engrossed in their own images to even turn around. For non-photographers, the incongruity of this image rests in the fact that all six people are (in a bitter cold wind, no less) making what appears to be the same picture of the same rock at the same time.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/40s f/3.6 at 30.8mm iso100 full exif

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Guest 07-Sep-2008 06:45
Like the runners at the start line:) I lie it very much.
Phil Douglis15-Aug-2008 21:51
You see what I am saying here very well, Endre. We are the same in that we are all human, yet we are all different because each of us can choose to see the world through our own lens, and in our own way.
endre novak15-Aug-2008 21:03
each in their own world, yet we are all in the same. brilliant and humorous.
Phil Douglis03-Mar-2007 20:30
Agreed. They may well be making entire different images of the very same subject -- the rocks before them. It all depends upon how each photographer frames, exposes and times the image in terms of the gradual passage of light that will fall upon those rocks as the sun slowly rises behind them.
Tim May03-Mar-2007 18:53
But, as we know, they may not be making the same picture - their cameras are pointed at different spots, and maybe their images will be as different as their stances.
Phil Douglis02-Mar-2007 23:07
It is only fitting that the first comment on this picture comes from the photographer adjusting that tripod with such energy. I am sure you ended up with some magnificent light. The photographers at Zabriskie Point are always part of the story. You can't avoid them, so you've got to use them as subjects.
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