My Favourite Photos Captured in October
The Dark Light Streets of Sydney
For me, this shot is about the return of the afternoon light back into the CBD after winter. This is a popular way of shooting Sydney's crisp light where you let the shadows drop into the darkness. It was a few days after taking this picture I happened to read this quote a few days later and it stopped me in my tracks and made me view this shot differently.
"The most transitory of things, a shadow, the proverbial emblem of all that is fleeting and momentary, may be fettered by the spells of our 'natural magic,' and may be fixed forever in the position which it seemed only destined for a single instant to occupy. [...] such is the fact, that we may receive on paper the fleeting shadow, arrest it there, and in the space of a single minute fix it there so firmly as to be no more capable of change." - Henry Fox Talbot
This quote echoes back to the very start of the photographic medium when there was still there was still an air of magic to it. How Henry would have loved to capture the shadow of a bird in flight. There are two main reasons this quote stops me dead in my tracks. The biggest one is the discussion of shadows, as we photographers work with the light. It is the reflected light that the camera captures, the shadows only form in a photograph from the lack of light.
While we have come a long way since then, the magic is still there but it is harder to see now that the use of a camera is so automated and commonplace. Which brings me to the second reason this quote made me think. Sometimes I get so caught up in making photos that I forget how magical the medium can be.
It is only now and again that I take a photo that has some magic to it, that makes me stop and ask "How did that happen?". One such moment happened last month while I was looking at some pictures I took of the Play "The nothing". This a real air of mystery and magic!
From left to right: Blake O'Brian, Isabella Stevenson and Emma Gibbons.
