Late afternoon visitors depart from Shwedagon's massive lobby. Thousands visit the huge temple complex from morning to night every day. The original color image, bathed in golden evening light, is strikingly beautiful, and made a perfect picture to end my sequence on a visit to Shwedagon in my Myanmar Travel article on Worldisround.com. You can view it at: http://www.worldisround.com/articles/139134/photo13.html
The basic concept of the image itself is to show less and say more by using backlighted underexposure to create an abstraction. The color version places all of these people, including the lone child who seems somewhat lost at the bottom, into a context of golden warmth. Visitors generally feel spiritually fulfilled after a visit to this incredibly beautiful gathering of Buddhist temples, and the color version fits that mood well.
This black and white version, on the other hand, is not as beautiful as that color image. But in some ways it may involve the imagination of the viewer to a greater degree. Without the golden light reflecting off the tiles, we are free to focus primarily on the varying forms. All of them, except the child, are wearing the sarongs that are the Burmese national costume for both men and women. In the color version, the child is an incidental afterthought. In the black and white version, however, the child becomes more of an issue. Is he lost? Why doesn’t anyone help him? What will happen to him? The image, which formerly was an exercise in symbolic mood, now asks questions and demands answers of the viewer. It is now a double abstraction, both in terms of the use of light and the use of color (or no color.) Rather than a just a good picture to use to end a sequence in a travel article, it now can stand alone as an expressive image that can trigger thoughts in the imagination of the viewer.