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Cecilia Lim | all galleries >> Galleries >> mixed impressions > Impressionist Campeche
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13 July 2005 Campeche, Yucatan, Mexico

Impressionist Campeche

It was raining and flooding when we first arrived in the beautiful and colourful UNESCO city of Campeche. I was not eager to leave the comforts of my dry car seat to run through the rain over to our hotel, which you can see as the blue building in this image. So while we waited the rain out in the car, my husband suggested making photographs through our wet windscreen. It was a wonderful idea that resulted in one of the most abstract, yet completely realistic images I've ever made. No special photoshop effects or filters were used for this shot, except for the raindrops trickling down our windscreen. The effect was amazing, completely transforming Campeche into an Impressionist painting. I discovered that focusing on the raindrops yielded the best results. Being stuck in one position in the front car seat did limit my angle and I had to crop this image quite a bit to get it the way I like it. Out of the 10 shots I made, I like this the best because the bright rear lights of a passing car added some incongruity and realism to this otherwise painterly image. It had been raining for the last 3 days here in Kuala Lumpur, and I thought it apt to post my most expressive rainy day image I 've made recently. This image sprang to mind because I will never forget the abstraction, mood and colours I captured in this delightful experiment during my first experience of Campeche.


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Cecilia Lim06-Jun-2007 14:18
Thank you Tricia & Ceci W for your wonderful comments here. In response:

Tricia - You're right! I would never use PS special effects on my photographs. I like making travel images and I feel that it is important that these types of imagery reflect the truth. Travel imagery after all is essentially photojournalistic. I would reserve those special gimmicky effects for other genres of photography which are more arty in nature. As unreal as this image looked, it was indeed very real and truthful to what I saw.

Ceci W - I love your description of "melting, shimmering, moving" colour. I feel very lucky to be able to create this image in a matter of under a second with some glass and rain, where as I know it would have taken the Impressionist painter up to days or months to complete it with an array of paints and brushes. This is why this image fascinates me so - The simplicity of its creation and the effect it made.
Guest 05-Jun-2007 19:51
What a feeling of love and connection it gives me to think that you, I and Phil all have had a similar thought, at different times, in different climes, through the use of our lenses! I know there must be thousands of others doing similar "rainy day" experiments with their cameras, and there's something ineffibly lovely in this shared impulse by artists of the world! This is a dreamy photo with almost gelato colors, and gives me a sense of a mirage, as though all in the frame were melting, shimmering, moving. It seems almost to illustrate a fact of physics, that what we see isn't real, or tangible, but whirling atoms -- illusions, tricks of the eye. A difficult concept to grasp, when we "see" and can "feel" everything. This photo is as lovely and pertinent as anything that the French Impressionists created. It deserves to be enlarged and hung on a wall so that eyes can "drink" of its luminous wetness and color. Bravo!
Phil Douglis05-Jun-2007 16:55
Thanks, Celia, for leaving that comment on my own rainy day image -- the more I look at them, the more they seem to have in common: rain, red car, lone figure, and distorted objects. Yet yours is impressionistic in style and mine is realistic in style. Each goes well beyond literality to involve the imaginations of their viewers, and together they eloquently define expressive photography's vastly varied potential for interpretation.
flowsnow05-Jun-2007 14:51
Celia, when I first saw this shot, I thought to myself..mm..Celia doing a PS work on her image? That's impossible. And when I read on....I must say this is an incredible shot. What else is there to say which has not been said by Phil and yourself?
Cecilia Lim05-Jun-2007 13:38
Thanks Phil for bringing your thoughts to this image. In making this image, I was surprised to learn that a literal representation of this scene was not necessary at all in expressing the mood, and that an image so abstract as this could do the job, if not even better! As you said, this image depicts the visual impression of the moment with light and colour. I also wanted to add that as I was studying the series of images I made here, I realized that elements such as the passing vehicles and the people walking by also impacted the meaning of the image. The one I made with a couple walking by in brightly coloured clothes, and one with a champagne colored car without rear lights on didn't cut it for me. But this lone man in dark clothing, hunched over with hands in his pocket added a touch of sombreness to this lively palette of colour, which expressed exactly the right mood for me.

I also posted a comment on your Rainy Day image - both our images took advantage of the dramatic mood that bad weather offers to make expressive photos. Rain has always been a deterrent for any photograhic activity for me - now I see only vast and exciting opportunities!
Phil Douglis05-Jun-2007 04:17
Oops. I gave you the wrong link to my picture. This is the correct link:http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/72910144
Phil Douglis05-Jun-2007 04:16
What a marvelous idea, Celia -- and you made the most of the opportunity. Many photographers deliberately shoot through wet windshields just for the sake of creating an interesting effect, which makes for good form, but often mean very little. Your image goes beyond being "different" or "interesting," the two catchwords of a photographer without an idea. You give us Campeche as a dream, a slice out of time. Impressionism was a movement in painting beginning in France in the 1860s. It was based on abstraction, an attempt to express a feeling or an experience, rather than describing the subject. It depicts the visual impression of the moment, based essentially on the shifting effect of light and color. This photograph does all of that and more -- creating melting colors offering mood and atmosphere that tell us what Campeche felt like to you on that rainswept day. The red car is, as you say, an incongruous metaphor for the present, awash in a scene out of the past.

The more I look at this image, the more it reminds me of a photo I made in Casablanca called Rainy Day.
It is athttp://www.worldisround.com/articles/139137/photo60.html While not impressionistic in style, I too, made the weather my subject. I too was shooting from inside of a car. I tried to express patience, loneliness, and frustration by layering a wet, cold figure upon the blur of a speeding red car. Enjoy.