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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Fifteen: Making travel portraits that define personality and character. > Elevator Operator, Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China, 2004
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14-JUN-2004

Elevator Operator, Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China, 2004

The Bund was the commercial and financial hub of Shanghai in the early years of the 20th Century. And no building on this elegant riverfront promenade was more famous than the Cathay Hotel, built by Sir Victor Sassoon in 1929. The Cathay still stands on the Bund today, but it is now known the Peace Hotel. Its smartly uniformed elevator operator blends seamlessly with the elegant Art Deco lobby. My goal was to say something about both past and present in this portrait. I took about twenty or thirty pictures and never said a word. I just kept smiling and working from a vantage point on a balcony just above the elevator door. Eventually she grew disinterested in what I was doing, stood as far back as she could within the small niche in front of the elevator door, put her hands behind her back, and gazed up and away from me. She seems discrete, polite, yet also shy, boxed-in and far, far away. Surrounded by symbols of a colorful past, she must stand and wait until her elevator can carry someone else into the future. This portrait is one of my favorites because it deals with a bit of history and the nature of work, and simultaneously reveals the character of a very polite and patient young woman.

Canon PowerShot G5
1/6s f/2.5 at 15.8mm full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis30-Nov-2004 20:22
Thanks, Filip, for the nice comment. This is one of my favorite portraits because of the geometry involved. She had backed herself into a box, and recognizing this, I tilted the camera to lead the eye into picture with the thrust of the railing and the old light fixture. I always study the edges before shooting, but this time I did not have time to make sure all of the edges were working for me because I saw her look up, and just had to capture it. And yes, I lost her toe in the process, and included a useless rail at the bottom. If I had cropped the bottom railing out later, I would have lost almost the whole foot. So I just went with it -- as I often tell my students, if you look closely enough at any picture, no matter how perfect you try to make it, you will always find something you wished you had done differently. Such is the case here.
Guest 22-Nov-2004 08:23
The tilt makes the shot. I also like how the hand rail leads my eyes to the subject who is a little off center. The light adds balance to the image and the warm tones give it a feeling of time gone by. Now, I'm not sure about the second, cropped hand rail. I'm sure you decided to keep it beacuse you wanted to have the woman's feet in the frame as well, but it is a little distracting (cropped feet might have been distracting as well, so it's really a coin toss). Anyway, I do like it, it has that certain special charm. Well done!
Phil Douglis14-Nov-2004 21:01
Thanks, Maciek, for this comment. I was well aware of the distracting railing on top of her foot when I chose this image for this gallery. Yet everything else works so well in this image that I accept its flawed technique in favor of its thought provoking meaning. We all try to make each image perfect, but in the end, content is always more important than form. Thanks again for stopping by. I find your own images to be among the most expressive on pbase.

Phil
Guest 14-Nov-2004 19:34
excellent use of the hand-rail which is parallel to the bottom line, bold tilted composition and a nice and natural pose of the girl. however a bit of the other handrail at the bottom is a bit distracting - it obscures her shoe and it is completely unnecessary in the frame. if you moved your camera a bit forward it would be a perfect picture ;)
anyway, great photo!
Guest 14-Aug-2004 19:13
Good Shot
Phil Douglis16-Jul-2004 19:29
You make a very important point here, Tim. Display can be as important as content. Where an image appears -- what precedes it and follows it -- is as important as what the image itself says. I very carefully edit my galleries here to vary the content, avoid redundancy, creating juxtapositions and contrasts from image to image. I want people scanning the thumbnails or clicking on one picture after another, to see my work in a cumulative progression, and take additional meaning from such display. Pictures are not viewed in a vacuum. Their meaning is affected by the words that accompany them, the order in which they are displayed, and the meaning of the pictures that precede and follow them. I am always surprised when pbase artists just upload a mass of photographs without considering these potential assets. Such photographers are using pbase as a data base instead of as a form of expression.
Tim May16-Jul-2004 18:55
This image alerts me to an aspect of pbase and other galleries that I realize I almost subconsciously pay attention to but am startled into by this image. While I like it and of itself, it really comes alive in the context of the whole gallery and particularly next to the previous image which so strongly creates a juxtaposition with this. Both women are at work, yet they are in such different contexts - which together creates a broader view of China today spanning the modern and ancient. Sometimes it matters where you put your pictures in the gallery.
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