Wednesday, November 18, 2009

GHOST IN THE ALLEY



Early morning is an exquisitely magical time in India; meditation begins at 4 a.m., worship at sunrise. There is a calm in the streets that is sprinkled with the bells of bicycle rickshaws and the glow of kerosene lamps. At the right time of the year the air is cool. This shot was taken around 3:30 a.m. during March of 2003. It is a side alley off of the main bazaar of Varanasi. If you look carefully you will see "a ghost" just to the right of the light at the end of the alley. This "ghost" is a man who was walking his bicycle. When he turned the corner into the alley he saw me and my camera on a tripod. He stopped as he didn't want to ruin my shot.
This shot is a 3 1/2 minute time exposure. The man was only in the scene for about the last 20 seconds. Because the illumination was so dark the 20 seconds resulted in the ghost like appearance of the man. For those of you interested in the photographic process, the blue in the shade is not something that I added. Blue is the color of shade. Most of the time we don't see the blue because human perception is not an objective process. What we "see" is frequently determined by what we have learned and not merely an accurate translation of the image on our retinas.

1 comment:

  1. How true, indeed. In the Book of Luke, chapter 11:

    "Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness."

    Namaste.

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