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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Eighteen: Light and Landscape – combining personal vision with nature’s gifts > Abandoned house, Bodie State Historic Park, Calfornia, 2006
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21-OCT-2006

Abandoned house, Bodie State Historic Park, Calfornia, 2006

Bodie once contained 2,000 buildings and 8,000 people. Today it is one of the best preserved ghost towns in the world. At sunset it seems truly haunted – this underexposed image, based on the brilliant gold of the sage, suggests rather than describes this house. We see only the side struck by light – the darkness implies the presence of the spirits that are said to live here.

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Phil Douglis23-Feb-2010 18:44
I try to use light upon the landscape to set a mood and give an image much of its character and meaning through that mood. I note that you often do likewise in your own work, Marcia.
Marcia Rules22-Feb-2010 23:51
such mood, a sight to behold with that meld of dwindling light and encroaching shadows :):)
Phil Douglis23-Feb-2008 01:01
Thanks, Rusty -- you are right. Bodie and Phil were made for each other. My kind of place. Haunted vibes, indeed. The key is to be there very early and leave very late. The light is wonderful at that altitude. This image was made at sunset, and the angle and color of the light on the grass and building facade was magnificent. Using spot metering, as always, we can intensify the contrast. And yes, this image mixes gold, blue, brown and black into a historical matrix. The geometry did not arrange itself -- we must do that by shifting our vantage point until everything comes into balance within the frame. It is essential, for instance, that we place the brush in the lower right hand corner to carry the viewer's eye up into the golden building facade.
russellt22-Feb-2008 23:38
your bodie images are some of my favorites. it must be the haunted vibe you were feeling. the qualities I like here include the light (the mixture of the gold and blue and what is it? black) the liberties with exposure, the brilliance of the brush, the way the geometry arranges itself, the general sense of decay...
Phil Douglis01-Jan-2007 20:23
Thanks for linking this image to my Fisher Towers picture -- both photographs are based on dark scenes featuring dramatic infusions of warm golden light. Warmth amidst the cold colors of darkness is always a welcome sight and can often imply better things to come.
pep11-Dec-2006 21:36
There something in this picture and that of the Fisher Towers earlier in this gallery... some sort of desolation and loneliness in the subject matter, and yet this strong, contrasting and warm light coming from the side, as if called to a better, brighter but still distant future. Or is it looking back at the good old days? Nostalgia and longing?
Anyhow, beautiful picture in wonderful gallery.
Phil Douglis19-Nov-2006 01:56
I am not sure which earlier pictures you are referring to, Ai Li, but you are right -- this image is made ghostly by the strong contrasts. I kept backing away, to create a bed of sage about the swallow the house.
AL18-Nov-2006 16:18
I'd seen your earlier pictures on the houses in Bodie which I felt much warmer and less haunting. Here you captured a different side of light, contrast and mood, turning the house into a ghostly face emerging from the dark. And with the tall sage, the sense of abandonment is intensified.
Phil Douglis27-Oct-2006 06:48
Well put, Christine. The field seems ablaze.
Christine P. Newman27-Oct-2006 00:24
A fire symphony.
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