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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty Nine: Juxtaposition – compare and contrast for meaning > Pushmi-pullyu, Olympic National Park, Washington, 2009
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23-JUN-2009

Pushmi-pullyu, Olympic National Park, Washington, 2009

I was buying a souvenir hat at a roadside outfitter when I learned that a herd of elk was grazing just behind it. I ran out of the store and into this shot. The two elk are juxtaposed in space as if they were linked, one incongruously merging out of the other. Mergers are usually disruptive, but this one makes one elk out of two. It reminds me of the Pushmi-pullyu, a fictional antelope in Hugh Lofting’s book, “The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle.” The Pushmi-pullyu has two heads at opposite ends of its body, and when it tries to move, both heads try to go in opposite directions.

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1/500s f/5.6 at 200.0mm iso100 full exif

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Phil Douglis04-Jul-2009 21:22
I shot it at full 400mm zoom, Rose, so I am essentially bringing them eight times closer to us than they actually are. They were probably about 50 feet away, yet they look here as if they are just about six feet away.
sunlightpix04-Jul-2009 05:24
Looks like you were really close! It's a great merger and title. I think there's a similar type of two-headed character on Sesame Street. Perhaps its a universal desire to want to go in two directions at once.
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