Taken at night, while boarding the Yamanote train in downtown Tokyo. The quality of the picture is less than average, but I like its mood. Heavy post-processing with levels and curves. I wanted cartoon-like colors and a grainy look.
Statistics
Place: 175 out of 250 Avg (all users): 4.7488 Avg (commenters): 7.2500 Avg (participants): 4.6518 Avg (non-participants): 4.8544 Views since voting: 1079 Votes: 215 Comments: 10 Favorites: 1 (view)
Thanks to all the persons who dropped a comment! You were way generous with your votes, and I do appreciate the encouragement. At the same time, I was disappointed to see _14_ ones - it means that many voters didn't think my image related to nostalgia at all, which is kind of ironic because I thought it was almost too "literal".
Let me add a few notes. First of all, the shot was not staged. I had already boarded the subway when I noticed this young woman watching her own reflection, and that triggered my attention. I waited for the train in front of her to leave, and took my shot. I liked the idea of a departing train as a metaphor of time passing by, and I also liked the idea of this woman staring at her reflection because it feels like watching your past self. Watching yourself, your past as it goes by - this felt very nostalgic to me. During post-processing I wanted to enhance the idea of this woman longing for her "other life". She was pretty short, and two tall guys were at her sides, so I cropped away both her legs and the guys, placing her in the frame according to the rule of thirds. In the reflection you can see one of the guys I cropped away and the woman herself, although it's not obvious that it's the same woman because the front of her shirt was so different from its back. I didn't mind this, because it makes you wonder "is it herself?", "who is that guy?", "was she with that guy in her other life?", "is she longing for a past love?", "or are they her parents, now passed away?". I liked the ambiguity, I found it intriguing. The quality of the image, though, was not good and the train looked brighter and more prominent than the woman herself. So I decided to go for some aggressive post-processing, and used curves and levels to give the image somehow inverted colors and a grainy look. I tried to make the image more "flat", suggesting that she is indeed part of that departing train, and at the same time I wanted her to stand on her own, alone in her present life. I also tried to make the departing train look like a roll of film unfonding in front of her, the reflection being a frame of her past (I didn't succeed though).
Intriguing idea, this would have been spot on for me if the foreground person had been a young lad facing the man in tie. Instead, there is a bit of dissonance between the girl and the man in terms of being able to reflect on each other for this to work. I don't like the post-processing, which is a shame as it almost works. 6
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
