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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty-Nine: Creating an echo with rhythm and pattern > Legs, Cochin, India, 2008
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04-APR-2008

Legs, Cochin, India, 2008

The men napping on a wall surrounding an old tree balance each other perfectly. The foliage hanging from the tree falls on both sides of the trunk, echoing the men who doze on both sides of the same trunk. Meanwhile, the trunk has ideas of its own. Its roots break the symmetry here by breaking through the wall at lower right. This picture is really all about legs – the legs of the men are horizontal and relatively inactive, but the roots of the tree, which look like the legs of a chicken, seem very active as they claw their way out of the break in the wall.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/160s f/4.0 at 7.4mm iso100 hide exif
Full EXIF Info
Date/Time04-Apr-2008 21:00:32
MakeLeica
ModelV-LUX 1
Flash UsedNo
Focal Length7.4 mm
Exposure Time1/160 sec
Aperturef/4
ISO Equivalent100
Exposure Bias-0.33
White Balance
Metering Modemulti spot (3)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Programprogram (2)
Focus Distance

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Phil Douglis06-May-2008 18:25
Your suggested crop stresses the point of the picture in an entirely different way, Tim. I base my approach on contrasting symmetry with asymmetry. The symmetry created by the two sides of the tree and the two reclining men, contrasts to the abrupt, asymmetrical eruption of the root through the wall below them. In your version, that symmetry is removed, and so is one of the men. You thereby focus entirely on the way the leg-like root incongruously extends the body position of the remaining man. Both approaches underscore the same point that you sum up here so well -- the futility of man's efforts to control nature.
Tim May06-May-2008 17:57
This, for me, is a very profound image. The short livedness of human lives and the attempts to control nature. Yet, in this case at least nature prevails. I also like the angle of the man on the right's legs in relationship to the angle of the chicken legs. I might be tempted here to have seen, as I do, the picture in the picture and cropped the image so that the interplay of the chicken leg and the man on the right was emphasized.
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