Chaos, Midtown, New York City, New York, 2011 by Phil Douglis

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30-JUL-2011

Chaos, Midtown, New York City, New York, 2011

I shot this image from a taxicab window as it moved slowly through the midtown Manhattan traffic. A jumble of advertisements and buildings, the scene is surreal. It is difficult to see where the advertising ends and reality begins, an apt metaphor for the chaos that often seems to characterize Manhattan.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5
1/400s f/3.5 at 19.2mm iso80 hide exif

Full EXIF Info
Date/Time	30-Jul-2011 12:43:35
Make	Panasonic
Model	DMC-LX5
Flash Used	No
Focal Length	19.2 mm
Exposure Time	1/400 sec
Aperture	f/3.5
ISO Equivalent	80
Exposure Bias	-0.66
White Balance
Metering Mode	multi spot (3)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Program	program (2)
Focus Distance

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Phil Douglis		13-Aug-2011 18:47
Thanks, Iris. Yes, commercial chaos can be disorienting, abrasive, and intrusive. However, midtown Manhattan has been a chaotic commercial scene for at least 100 years, and perhaps more. If today's chaos seems worse, it is only because the technology of salesmanship has evolved to gargantuan proportions.

Iris Maybloom (irislm)		12-Aug-2011 22:37
Chaos.......commercial chaos. A sad sign of the times!

Phil Douglis		12-Aug-2011 20:00
Thanks, Carol, for enjoying the chaos here. You know New York City well, and as such, you can well appreciate the essence of Midtown Manhattan. We had to take a slow cab from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue to Park Slope in South Brooklyn, and of all the shots I found during this stop and go journey, this was the one that best caught the tone of the trip.

Carol E Sandgren		12-Aug-2011 18:53
Ah, that jumbled assault of colorful advertising! Times Square of course is noted for this... so much input one doesn't know where to look first! I love your rendition of chaotic NY!

Phil Douglis		11-Aug-2011 17:08
Thanks, Claudia. I always do "drive-by" photography as a passenger, never from behind the wheel. The back seat of a taxicab stuck in New York traffic is a perfect location for such activity. In this case, I noticed that the Chevrolet ad was fully integrated into an office building, which made it a wonderfully incongruous subject. I simply zoomed out a bit to fill the background with still another building, and include the ads at left. It is indeed metaphorical in nature -- Manhattan is a hugely competitive arena, and this image symbolizes the chaotic nature of the battle for attention.

BleuEvanescence		11-Aug-2011 01:08
I call this "drive by shooting". I just love to shoot (behind my lens) through car windows. It offer us (and the viewer) a unique view and moments that often will never come back. Of course, doing this with a driver...is safer. This particular image reflects a portion of the fast world we live in, indeed a metaphor that could be applied to many big cities around the world, often, making us dizzy too. I am afraid the individual messages these ads/logos are suppose to convey are lost in the sea of publicity. We can't avoid feeling in the middle of some kind of action, making us appreciate even more the end of day, looking from the hotel window, hopefully from a skyscraper, those firefly lights in the night...

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