Time drops, a photo from Louangphabang, North

Photographer's Note

As surely as the alarm of a natural clock, monsoon showers pour down over Luang Prabang, starting from 4PM for an hour on.

Where we westerner would pester against the rain, it looks like it has no effect on the quiet lao people except striking a time for looking away and beyond or for inner meditation...

Here at the corner of Luang Prabang's Hmong market, time has stopped again, everybody minds quietly his own business under the warm showers...
What is he thinking about? his next ride or a more profound meaning of life?...

I thought I was so close I would have disturbed his daydreaming but he didn't care at all for me hiding under my umbrella.. I would have liked further shots but the way I didn't exist almost paralyzed me... anyway, my umbrella was useless against frozen time.

This one is quite difficult to explain as i see it : I'm not sure it's an image purely but most surely a capture about time. Nothing to do about decisive moments or sorts, just thick raw time...

sohrab, Darren, jp80, Josh69, MKING, bodinux, Proxilva, Galeota, KevRyan, Porteplume has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

sohrab (7439) 2004-11-30 18:25

even i dont know whether it's a decisive moment or not. but it's beautiful , the moment, the composition, the colours everything...
i think your composition here is pretty much perfect a little closer , wouldn't have looked too nice and if you were alittle further back, then i think this kind of a division between the 2 because of the flap wouldnt have been very visible.
i dont know if i make sense by saying this, but i think , this flap kind of divides the whole moment into 2 sub moments..
one of the girl quielt playing with whatever she has in her hand and man on the other hand lost in his thoughts. i guess you could call this a decisive moment.
take care :)

p.s. once again i might not make sense by saying this, but i love the shimmer withing the blur in the background. even i get similar blurs, but havent noticed this kind of a blur in a digital photograph.

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Darren (6823) 2004-11-30 19:07

Hi Luko. I think I am seeing what you are seeing in this photo at least in some way. The colors here are really subdued and look really great to me. For some reason, this shot does give the effect of a moment frozen in time. Seems like there is little else to do but wait for time to pass and it is doing so very slowly. I really like how he is sitting contemplating, but almost as importantly, I like how the driver is also doing something which appears to be for no other reason as to pass time. In Taiwan it might be a GameBoy or a cell phone, I am not sure what it would be here. There are two things in this shot that bother me a little, both involving the pinkish tarp in the middle. First, it is just a little dominant in the shot for me; it is a little larger and brighter than I might like. I realize there is little that could be done about this, you made a good capture of what was present in front of you. Secondly, I think you might have missed your focus here. The tarp appears sharper then the guy on the right to me. I wish it was the opposite. Still a very nice shot.

I haven't had the b&w film processed yet, it will go to the lab on Thursday, hopefully I will have some shots up and ready by sometime next week.

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Josh69 (1437) 2004-12-01 7:47

Interesting photo... the sort of thing you may see if you were sitting in a cafe by the road looking out. I like the choice of focus point on the plastic.

clodreno (0) 2004-12-01 10:12

The main thing I like about this one is the composition. I love to see big masses of color whenever possible.
Then there is the action by itself, well captured.

Proxilva (2157) 2004-12-06 13:23

i think he's just admiring the shapes of that lovely woman that would have bee in the shot using a wider angle Luko ;-D noo i love such shots...
shooting in the rain is often a disappointment cause of the lack of light and vivid elements, but you found the solution i see :) looking for bright colors and the results turns out to be amzingly good... never thought of it until now haha i got a new mission in these rainy times... thanks a lot man!!

Galeota (10352) 2004-12-18 16:55

Bref, j'ai du cr嶪r une "Nouvelle discussion" pour 嶰rire mon commentaire, car le nombre de caract鋨es d廧assait la limite impos嶪 ici.

Voir donc ce lien

Porteplume (4036) 2005-02-10 7:58

On d嶰ouvre parfois des tr廥ors.
Si techniquement je ne suis pas apte � te donner mon avis Luko, parce que trop inexperte, sur l'impact de cette image par contre je ne trouverai que de bonnes choses � dire, alors je m'en excuse � l'avance... :o)
La composition, le chatoiement des couleurs, le mouvement qui s'intercale entre les parties plus fig嶪s de l'image, la notion de temps qui en exulte, tout 蓷 me comble de "satisfaction oculaire" - :o) - [J'aurai pu dire "pour le plaisir des yeux" mais 蓷 n'aurait pas 彋� assez fort]

Tout 蓷 pour dire que l'image m'enchante, qu'elle repr廥ente mon id嶪 de l'Art en photographie ou, au moins, me fait douter de l'affirmation que la photographie n'est pas une expression artistique. Disons que si un jour il m'arrive de faire une photo comme celle-ci je serai "aux anges"... En parlant d'anges je dois ajouter que la r嶧ction de Gal est tout aussi exaltante, je trouve qu'il a su tr鋊 bien traduire ton image en mots, quelqu'un qui n'aurait pas le pouvoir de voir ta photo pourrait certainement "l'imaginer" gr歊e � son texte.

Merci de ce cadeau! ;o)

Furachan (0) 2005-05-12 15:18

This scene is so heavy-laden with associations, with a certain longing. If I might single out one thing: the "rich", almost "princely" aspect of the cheap purplish plastic sheet that separates the two protagonists - made all the richer by the generous rain...
BRAVO!

MKING (3054) 2006-03-28 1:18

As others have said-- composition. Been studying the works of Australian reportage photographer/historian John Williams-- he displays a very similar erratic, loose style during the 1970s with multiple subjects framed and none of them more prominent than the other-- a sort of order in chaos. What is distinguishing here, compared to Williams, is the tarp forming a strong division between the characters.

So in sum like the other responses: distinctive composition.

moxon (78) 2006-05-10 23:50

Discovered this thanks to a link on your recent rain photo. This is wonderful and much, much more evocative than the Burma shot. Gorgeous colours and very cinematic looking but what I like most is that you've managed to capture something insubstantial--time. You're right, it feels heavy, almost a physical presence here. The focus on the inanimate object is therefore perfect. A really beautiful and strangely neglected shot.