Cutter, Huay Xai, Laos, 2005 by Phil Douglis

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18-JAN-2005

Cutter, Huay Xai, Laos, 2005

Protecting her eyes from the bright Asian sun with an umbrella, a woman does some trimming in a Mekong village market. I was not as interested in what she was doing or what she looked like as I was by luminosity of the backlighting, which passes through the umbrella and abstracts the woman by turning her into a silhouette. A market is a place of thousand small acts happening at once. As a photographer, I try to find those acts, do whatever I can to isolate them and abstract them, and make them symbolize the nature of the marketplace itself.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20
1/500s f/5.2 at 64.5mm iso80 hide exif

Full EXIF Info
Date/Time	18-Jan-2005 14:03:25
Make	Panasonic
Model	DMC-FZ20
Flash Used	No
Focal Length	64.5 mm
Exposure Time	1/500 sec
Aperture	f/5.2
ISO Equivalent	80
Exposure Bias
White Balance	(10)
Metering Mode	multi spot (3)
JPEG Quality	(6)
Exposure Program	program (2)
Focus Distance

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Phil Douglis		15-Dec-2005 18:27
Thanks, Echo, for your comment. The tone here is low key, subordinate to the strong use of abstraction. I am trying to involve your imagination in this image by showing you less and hopefully letting the picture thereby say more.

Guest		15-Dec-2005 06:47
don't know why, this one impressed me a lot. might be the tone in this shot.

Phil Douglis		06-Apr-2005 19:15
You illuminate my intentions and methods with this analysis, Jen. Thank you so much for making these important teaching points. There are indeed many ways to interpret any subject, and this one is no different. If I had been shooting from the other side of her, it would have been an entirely different image because I would have been able to define her appearance and her concentration. By backlighting her I use abstraction to instead kindle the imagination of the viewer and express the way in which she works and indeed, lives. Thanks also for drawing comparisons to my image of Neruda's silhouette. As you point out,silhouettes do ask questions and demand answers from our viewers if we can effectively relate them to symbolic contexts.

Jennifer Zhou		06-Apr-2005 14:08
Dear Phil, after all the busyness and all sets of incongruities in the previous picture, you give me a totally abstracted one here! I am absolutely in awe of your ability to use various ways to explore this market place. Going through that busy market street, you took us here sitting right behind this woman working under her umbrella. And I can't help think about your other picture of Neruda in Chile two years ago.http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/25585516 In that shot you use the silhouette of his sculpture to question about immortality. In here you cut a piece from a large picture to show the nature of the market place in a more delicated way. I like the plants in your Neruda picture to ask question about life, and here using the umbrella to isolate the subject and to show this woman's personal tastes and her working/weather condition. I agree with you Phil, who this woman is, what she is doing are not important to us, this woman could be anyone else working in the market, what's important is the expression of hardworking laotian living in a simple life will be always left in our hearts! Jen

Phil Douglis		01-Mar-2005 02:02
Thanks, Mo, for finding so much value in this example. I included it in this gallery because it demonstrates how to use abstraction, light, and shadow to express ideas in marketplace photography.

monique jansen		28-Feb-2005 13:21
Second time around, this one impresses me even more than the first time - play with light and shadow, the extreme abstraction, this might be the one for me in this gallery.

Phil Douglis		28-Feb-2005 03:26
What she is cutting, Mo, is not important. It is why I abstract this image -- to leave room for the viewer's imagination to work.

Phil Douglis		28-Feb-2005 02:39
Thanks, Dandan. Yes, the silhouetted subject makes this an ideal photograph for my gallery on abstraction. But I wanted to show how abstraction can work in the marketplace as well. The intimacy you speak of is a function of both the umbrella, which reflects her personal taste, and my vantage point, which places the viewer right over her shoulder.

monique jansen		27-Feb-2005 14:16
Love this one Phil - the abstraction of it, the backlight, the fact you can still see her in a domestic act of something or the other, we do not know what she is cutting, do we? Excellent!

Guest		27-Feb-2005 10:44
The umbrella seems bringing the viewer into her little world… it makes me feel so intimate with her. The silhouette really brings my attention to what she was doing. This one could fit perfectly in the abstract gallery.

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