Istanbul lamp shop

It occurs to me that I only rarely, if ever, do not express great fondness for those photographs I post here. In that respect, this photo is no different, however, this time I have objective proof the shot is a good one. After it was published in Gonzaga's literary journal, Reflection, (which, unfortunately, has not yet been made available online), a fellow student with whom I had never before spoke sent me a Facebook message expressing their compliments. Their exact words were "love, love, love." Sounds like pretty definitive evidence of excellence to me.

But what makes this shot so spectacular? For me, it is the powerful sense that this was a moment which will never again occur. For only a fraction of second, the man stood like this, looking back. Then it was he gone. He left in the other direction. In that moment, though, there is energy. The opposition of his eyes and feet begs for release. Behind him stands an explosion of background. The sheer insanity of that clustered mass of hanging lamps in all their shapes, all their textures, all their designs, all their variety is so different from the clean and ordered aesthetics of a Wal-Mart or Pier 1 Imports. I will say this for Istanbul shops: they do one product and they do them well.

Of course, all this self-praise is not to say this photo does not bother me in some ways. Mostly, it's the composition. It's terrible, really. The man's eyes are near the center of the image, a dead-zone for energy and no-no taught at the beginning of every photography course. His entire body is just off from the center, unbalancing the entire visual weight in a bad weigh. The cropping the bodies on both sides feels sloppy. The whole image seems tilted, but that may just be the scan job.

Still, I like it. Probably one of my better ones. Which just goes to show how much farther I have to go.