What do you see?
My love of night photography persists although erratically. Today’s picture was remarkably hard to take but mostly because people kept wandering into the frame and of corse would “blur” so I found myself saying, “stand still of get out of the way!” over and over in my head. …I love people but sometimes - well - sometimes I need to be alone. (I’m sure someone behind me was thinking the same thing about me!)
What interests me particularly today is the idea of each of the different pieces in this very stereotypically North African scene working together so very well. I love how when I walked thought the arches toward the fountain at the end there each of the individual tiles or pieces of glass became even more distinct. From a distance the effect the builders? artists? (what do you call people who do this stuff? - other than gifted?) were trying to accomplish becomes much more obvious. Symmetry, coordination, function and culturally obvious design. Nice. Very nice.
The individual elements, the smooth stones, tiles and glass - even the shaped shadows, all have to fit properly together together for things to work. Oh it’s “busy” but at the same time (when people aren’t wandering through the shot) calming too.
No, the pieces are not all the same but definately complementary and harmonious and certainly if any element were missing it would be really really missed. Take a tile off the wall and leave a blank space and your eye would be drawn there wondering where it had gone.
What a parallel on life! Although I’m always wary of over leaning on such comparisons too heavily, certainly there are some things worth a thought in that context too.
If a new owner of this property decided to paint it to avoid the trouble of upkeep I don’t think I’d be visiting again. Magnolia is almost always a cop out, in this case that would be a crime. Can you imagine covering up something so intricate and interesting?
But then my favorite part of the scene is the shadows under the lamps in the foreground. Did you miss them hiding there? Don’t they do a lovely job of complementing the rest of the scene?
What a lovely place.
