The last breathby
Rino63Comment by amber: Hi from the Critique Club!
Looking at your portfolio it seems you have a conceptual approach to photography. This image is almost an abstract, having a symbolic meaning. To be honest I have no idea what is in the glass; is it a paper flower, or tissue paper, or a real, dried up flower? Does it matter? My logical mind
needs to know. My creative mind doesn\'t care.
Having just watched England being cheated out of a place in the semi-finals of the world cup, I fully appreciate the feelings that go with \'desolation\'. So ironically, I can look at your image through desolate eyes. And it
does match my mood. My joi de vivre has been sucked from me, and like your glass and flower I have collapsed to the ground, in slow motion. It is not simply about a meaningless football game; the game serves to remind me of all the times in my life I have felt desolate, let down and deflated. Times when this image would have mirrored my mood perfectly.
As TheMegalomaniac commented, the way you have captured the motion blur at the top of the image rather than at the bottom, is wonderfully unexpected and makes the viewer stop and think. Symbolically, it captures that aspect of life, where the years and time seem to fly by at the speed of light, becoming a blur. People often report their lives flashing before their eyes when their lives are in grave danger, again your blur illustrates that perfectly. So the blur is life, and the still image at the bottom is indeed the last breath, as the glass has not yet hit the ground, but that is only milliseconds away.
The colours are well thought out. The drab brown of the background and foreground is perfect. To me it looks like soil; soil in a graveyard, waiting to accept the dried up shell of what once was full of life. The pastel reds and orange of the flower are a lovely contrast to the starkness of the soil. But they are only pale imitations of the vibrant colours the flower once had, when it was full of life. The dried up, paper texture of the flower is only a pale imitation of the smooth, velvety texture it once boasted.
A lovely, emotive, poetic image.
Photographer found comment helpful.
