Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Motion in Still Photography


This is an image made at the now well known Kamalaya Hotel in Koh Samui, Southern Thailand. I shot this image for myself, while staying there enjoying new year holiday.  The image was a cropped version of the beautiful lotus pond at the hotel lobby. 
Lotus is an interesting object, especially for Chinese, or may be for most of the oriental cultures. For Chinese, lotus often used to refer a gentleman, that it is more important what one became, rather than where he came from; just as the beautiful and clean lotus grown up from the mud. For buddhist, it also represents the varies level of mind and spiritual development.
I like this image a lot for a lot of reasons, of course lotus as subject itself, but much more.  First is the camera used to capture the image was a fine crated Swiss made Alpa 12 camera,  it is a camera designed all the way back to the very basic, handing all photography creativity back to photographer himself, rely on nothing but the movement of photographer's hand. The lens in use was the rare Carl Zeiss 38mm Biogon specially made for Alpa, of very limited number and long discontinued. The combination of the camera and lens perhaps represents the very best of still image making tool of highest precision.  The image was captured with a Phase One P45 back of 39mp resolution, and what did it capture?
The beautiful light on the pond, the water,  the shadow, the beautiful lotus in light and also in shadow, but also a jumping goldfish?  The fish, although small, while it jump in the area where the water pouring down to the surface of the pond, signify a lively image that such a small creature to challenge the relatively dynamic nature force, thru the media the fish itself live in.  I don't know if goldfish even jumps!
In still photography, the moment freeze between shutter open and close, but really nothing is still.  All the images presented tell us something, and it depends on how we read the picture.

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