It’s definitely feeling like autumn, for which I have mixed feelings. I like the colorful foliage and the toasty smell of the dead leaves and crumbled acorns. I also like the crisp temperatures that put me in the mood for tea or hot cider. But I don’t like the struggle and the depressing feeling of waking up in the dark, especially since I’m definitely not a morning person. Nor do I enjoy commuting during those raw gloomy rainy days and then returning, once again, in the dark. Sometimes it even triggers that same dejected feeling I use to get when I was starting a new fall semester at public school, which was not a good experience for me.
Those are some of the thoughts that cross my mind with this photo. Everything about it was fast. The person with the umbrella was walking quickly so as to dodge collisions with other pedestrians. I could not even get a good look to determine whether it was a man or a woman. I took the shot quickly as well as I did not want to lose him or her in the crowd. I’m pretty sure that my camera was still moving in its arc toward my eye while I was simultaneously pressing the shutter. Plus I was walking fast during the shot to keep up with my target.
All of this contributed to an unintentional blur that I happen to like. All I did was to desaturate the color to tone down the intensity of the umbrella and to emphasize the somber feeling that a drab day imparts on my psyche.
Another byproduct of the motion blur is that it wipes away some of the detail to create flattened shapes, especially in the torso. At once, the image presents reality and an abstraction. And that is part of what I like about being in the moment and photographing without too much deliberation and trusting the creative instincts that have been developed over time.
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