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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Sixteen: Story-telling street photography > Bison crossing, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
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29-SEP-2006

Bison crossing, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006

Animals always have the right of way in Yellowstone. The incongruous congruence of man and bison here is intensified by the flow of animals from right to left. We see bison in full on either side of the road, while semi-abstracted bison work their way around the two cars stopped in front of us. The empty road ahead beckons, but no car will move until all of the bison have safely crossed. I made this shot through the windshield of our van with a telephoto focal length of about 280mm. I took care to place the white lines bordering the road in each corner, drawing the eye diagonally through the image. I anchor the picture on the back of a red car with its five glowing stoplights

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50
1/160s f/4.0 at 41.5mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis05-Jun-2007 21:06
It took nine months for this image to draw a comment, and I am glad that you are the first, Ceci. Your enviromentally oriented commentary is right on the mark, as usual. I see that empty road ahead as symbolic of the future, too. That is why I composed the image around that road twisting towards the upper left corner of the frame. It is an image that asks many questions and leaves the answers to the viewers. I like your musings -- they elevate the meaning of this picture far beyond some animals crossing the road in a national park.
Guest 05-Jun-2007 20:12
Just a click away from the rainy Morroccan street I just visited, this is a stunner as well. I can't help but think that these "horseless carriages," respectfully stopped to let the remnants of once vast herds that blacked the plains for miles cross in their perpetual wandering after pasture, are icons of so much: wealth, power, transport, the open road, freedom, work, play, status ...all the things that bison represented for our indiginous people. They were dependent upon these animals, in precisely the same way that we are dependent upon our automobiles. I love your explanation of how you constructed this image, and really "got it" as I studied what was happening here. And I love the license plate that reads NWD: No Weapons of Destruction! That one of the buffalo is caught directly between two cars is interesting, also. It couldn't illustrate a "clash of culture" any better!

I love the empty road ahead, symbolic of what it might be filled with: environmentally friendly vehicles, or more of the greedy gas guzzlers currently clogging our highways, keeping us dependent upon foreign fossile fuel? Peace or war? Annihilation of yet more animal species and continued degradaton of the earth, or an awakened reverence for this planet, our only home? Room for all living things, or just the proliferating human race? Hmmmmmmmmmm.
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