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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery One: Travel Abstractions -- Unlimited Thought > Sunset in Golden Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007
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20-FEB-2007

Sunset in Golden Canyon, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007

I juxtaposed two layers of canyon walls here. One is illuminated by the setting sun. The other is in shadow, and becomes an abstract base for the image. This abstract black shape moves this image from description to expression. It triggers the imagination of my viewers, forcing them to do a double take and consider what they might be looking at here. Nature reveals and nature conceals, and this image does both.

Leica D-Lux 3
1/800s f/8.0 at 6.3mm iso100 full exif

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Phil Douglis18-Feb-2008 19:35
You make an excellent point about directional flow here, Suzy. We read left to right, and thus view images in the same manner. In this case, the "check mark" leads down and then up and out. As you say, if the image had been reversed, the eye would fall and not soar as it scans the image from left to right. Thanks for mentioning the shadow -- it remains ambiguous, and it is that ambiguity that involves the imagination of the viewer.
Suzy Walker-Toye18-Feb-2008 16:56
I also thought it was sand. I very much like the composition, the way your eye is attracted straight to the intersection (to a strange black shadow that never quite revels what it is) and then the Nike tick shape allows your eye to escape to the freedom of the blue sky. I think it could have been quite claustrophobic if the picture had been flipped so the diagonal read downwards from left to right instead, then your eyes would never escape.
Phil Douglis04-Aug-2007 18:15
It is delightful, Patricia, to see how my image looks to the eye of a painter such as yourself. Nature itself becomes the artist here, as you define the aesthetic pleasures created by the interplay of light, shadow, form, shape, color and texture. And once again, you use your vivid imagination to transform the image by turning its form-field
relationships inside out and upside down. Thank you.
Patricia Lay-Dorsey04-Aug-2007 07:55
And to me it makes perfect sense in that I see the foreground in shadow and the midground in sun. Somehow it feels more like a sandscape than canyon walls, always shifting and settling into new ideas, just as our ever-shfting minds do. This image, to me, is about the light and dark that we find within. The peaks dip down in the light and thrust upwards in the shadows which is just the opposite of my personal experience. This image turns things upside down while remaining perfectly balanced. It makes me feel centered and grounded.
Phil Douglis03-Mar-2007 20:02
Thanks, Tim, for seeing the incongruity in this image. I saw the shadow as an abstract base for the image, and now I know why. You have endowed the shadow with mysterious powers that contradict logic and reason and science, yet the illusion of this shadow as a light source is very much there.
Tim May03-Mar-2007 18:19
For me, this image creates a double-take - it is like the world of physics is turned upside down - the shadow is casting light.
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