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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Four: The Workplace -- essence of a culture > Pedicab, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2010
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04-JUN-2010

Pedicab, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2010

This man transports tourists around Santa Fe by foot power. This image illuminates the challenge of his task. At the moment his pedicab is empty, and there seems to be no one on the early morning streets. I capture him in silhouette, wearing a straw hat to shield his face from the summer sun. The sun bathes the adobe structure behind him, a local hotel, in golden light. He rides off into the shadows to find his customers.

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Phil Douglis15-Nov-2010 20:34
Thanks, Norbi, for your views on this photograph. Composition -- the way we put a picture together for coherence and meaning -- is very important to me. In this case, the three main elements: man, building, and sky, flow through the frame as a diagonal force.
norbi14-Nov-2010 22:53
Besides the wonderful contrast of colours (blue/green and browntones) this is a perfect balanced composition with excellent sharpness. v. norbi
Phil Douglis05-Jul-2010 17:23
Glad to hear from you again, Veraferia. I am honored by your comment. You are a remarkable travel photographer and have a lot to offer me as well.
veraferia05-Jul-2010 08:19
Superb image. It's a long time I'm viewing your work.You are a great teacher for me.Thank you for sharing your experience and splendorous images!
Phil Douglis03-Jul-2010 21:25
Thanks, Jen, for underscoring the fact that expressive photography is an act of intention on the part of the photographer. Each of us should define our own purpose in framing and making an image. As you can see, Jim would have most likely gone for a working portrait of the pedicab driver by framing for the man and wall, while I chose to frame for a different story here, a working man contrasted to the scale of his task, which is serving an entire community. Yes, expression is an act of communication. This is the title of this cyberbook: Communicating with Pictures, and that is how I believe images should be approached. Communication itself is all about intention, and each of us should have our own purposes and define them visually according to those intentions.

You've added still another dimension to this image for us, Jen -- its universality. This man is probably Hispanic, yet to you in China, he would seem almost at home on the streets of Shanghai. Yet the context certainly tells us that he is working in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jennifer Zhou03-Jul-2010 04:41
A lot of times, I had same questions whether or not to crop my image, but here you give us the perfect explaination: it is an act of communication, and it all depends on photographers's own intentions. And in this case I totally agree with you on the framing, it helps to express the meaning of the photograph!

The intersting thing for me is that the clothes the man is wearing seems like chiense silk jacket, along with the straw hat and the pedicab, he is just perfect riding on the street of China. But the style of the building in the background provides a totally different flavour!
Phil Douglis29-Jun-2010 22:09
Thanks, Jim, for the suggestion. If I had framed the image for only the man and the wall, I would have still had to incorporate the entire center window as well. That would be a different image, emphasizing the man, the pedicab and adding a context of town itself. What I do here is quite different -- I choose to expand that context, diminishing the man on the pedicab, and making him seem smaller in scale and smaller in stature. He seems to be a bit overwhelmed in this context, whereas in the cropped version, he would not. Two different images, two different meanings. Cropping an image in the frame is an act of communication. It is up to each photographer to crop according to his or her own intentions.
Phil Douglis29-Jun-2010 22:04
Interesting point,Tim. The shadows here to set up a beat that brings the structure and the pedicab together into a state of harmony and meaning.
jlm29-Jun-2010 21:06
Crop for keeping only the wall, no ?
Tim May29-Jun-2010 18:57
The play of shadows in the morning sun is interesting here - the line that leads to the decoration on the bottom left and the shadows created by the structure. They seem to be creating the rhythm or beat for the pedaling of the bike.
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