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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twelve: Using color to express ideas > Soho Sunset, New York City, 2006
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07-AUG-2006

Soho Sunset, New York City, 2006

A cross section of the Industrial Age serves as the foreground layer for a sunset that illuminates a flow of golden clouds and contrails in the pale blue evening sky. The abstracted foreground layer provides substantive context for these colorful pyrotechnics. The water tank, which blocks the sun, could be as old as the 20th Century itself. The buildings below it, which echo the diagonal flow of the overhead clouds, appeared in the mid 20th Century. A street light, bursting out of the trees to point at the tower, is from the late 20th Century. The streaking contrails, offering a diagonal counter thrust to the huge golden cloud, are trails from 21st Century jets. But it is the color that makes this scene memorable. The intensity of golden sun celebrates the end of another working day in Soho, the industrial heart of Old New York.

Leica D-Lux 2
1/800s f/5.6 at 20.9mm iso100 full exif

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Phil Douglis18-Aug-2006 18:11
Thanks for the seeing the water tank as a rocket, Ai Li -- it brings an entirely different perspective to the image. A pointer towards the heavens, if you will. It is certainly an incongruous thought -- these old water tanks are 19th century technology, and hardly rocket science. And you tie the upward thrust as an end to a beautiful day. You are a very positive thinker. You see the glass half full, and the opportunities unlimited.
AL18-Aug-2006 07:47
I always admire people living at coastal area or countryside where they get to witness spectacular open view of sunset and sunrise. I never truly appreciate them in a bustling city, full of pollution, noise, traffic and obstruction, till now. Here it's interesting to picture how the sun sets and rises around the water tank, which happens to resemble a rocket to me. Rising high and pointing us to the big sky and the endless possibilities. I chose to see sunset as a beautiful end of the day and the beginning of a fresh new day. Nice.
Phil Douglis13-Aug-2006 22:41
That is the key, Tim -- in spite of its dense population, New York is filled with parks and trees, and if the winds cooperate to clear out the smog, its coastal location can produce spectacular skies at sunset.
Tim May13-Aug-2006 20:54
I think many of your New York City pictures deal with the interplay of nature and man - significant to me in this image is the fact the streetlight is dark - dwarfed by nature light - yet I know that when the sun is gone we will depend on the small artificial light.
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