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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twelve: Using color to express ideas > Pilings, Petaluma River, Petaluma, California, 2007
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11-JUN-2007

Pilings, Petaluma River, Petaluma, California, 2007

This image is about contrasting colors on the ends of wet pilings. They were beneath a pier along the Petaluma River, and no longer supporting anything. Most likely, they are remnants of a previous structure. Nature takes its own toll – years of tides have led to the flaking of old paint, and bright green moss commonly found in damp habitats has reinvigorated two of the three pilings. Using a spot meter, I expose for the brightly colored pilings, which causes the underside of the pier behind them to go even darker. The moss brings dead wood to life once again on both the left and right but the piling in the center is diminished in size, without color or vitality – it is nothing more than a decaying stump. The three pilings use contrasting color to tell the story of nature’s winners and losers.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/25s f/3.6 at 23.0mm iso100 full exif

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Phil Douglis26-Oct-2007 05:46
Now you are letting your imagination go into high gear, Marcia. That is what I had intended to do with this picture. Make people think, feel, and wonder. In reality it is only three hunks of dead wood -- yet in the fantasy of the mind, they become so much more.
Marcia Manzello26-Oct-2007 05:06
I see it differently...the center is not a decaying stump, if you look again you will see the lively soul of 2 people, there is a Monk on the left one, and on the right there is a gap, that looks to me like a mouth of a hungry subject and where should be the throat, I see a curious cat...
WOW! What a trip...Voted
Phil Douglis26-Sep-2007 23:03
What is happening here, Suwanee, is taking place in your own imagination, not the photo. The photo is the trigger, but the imagination is the gun.
Guest 11-Sep-2007 06:02
This image fascinates me. It is almost like a scene from Lord of The Rings movie, so mysterious, but so fascinating.
Phil Douglis02-Jul-2007 19:38
Thanks, Tim, for your comment, and for linking this image to your own of the same subject. As I noted when responding to your version, your closeup of the moss on a single piling is like a map filled with mysterious shadows that seem to make the piling paper thin. From my vantage point, those shadows are invisible, and as you say, two of the pilings here seem to be teasing their bland companion.
Tim May02-Jul-2007 17:58
I chose to focus on one piling accentuating the texture and color, creating a sense of lonely depth, http://www.pbase.com/mityam/image/81548071 While your trio seems to me to be more social. It is almost as if the two where telling their friend to, "get a little color!," "live a little!"
Phil Douglis21-Jun-2007 19:22
It's the rounded ends of the pilings that resemble ghosts, Mo. And yes, they are slimy, and they can be nightmarish to some.
monique jansen21-Jun-2007 09:46
They are like green ghosts, with slimy bits to come and haunt us
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