A mood of joy

 A photon is a quanta of light. Light is absorbed and emitted one photon at a time - Michigan State University.

In this photograph we see a tunnel made by jets of water coming out of regularly placed nozzles along the long edge of a shallow pool. A child is running through the tunnel, enjoying the thrill of his play. I captured him in the last 1600th of a second before the shutter was closed.

During evolution of my photographic style I have increasingly become attracted to taking moody photographs.

For me what matters is the emotive content of a photograph. Everything else is an accessory. What I mean by that is the mood, a general sense of what is going on. I like it when I leave blanks in a puzzle and the viewer participates the discovery process. Facing sun is one way of creating such opportunities, allowing me to use darkness eliminating what is not essential for the mood. 

When we face the sun during sunrise or sunset or other times during winter when the light rays have stronger horizontal vectors, longer shadows and occasionally glitters expose a different world. Maybe this is so primordial for humans. We seem to feel differently at those times. 

You might ask why using a dark silhouette? Wouldn't it be better if the subject (child) was exposed even slightly so? Wouldn’t knowing his facial features or his outfit enhance the mood?

I have technical and philosophical arguments against using higher exposure.

Technically I had to reduce the exposure compensation before taking the picture. Facing the sun, that is the only way to eliminate burn outs. Drastic negative exposure compensation kept the child in dark, apart from leaving a lovely outline. That is exactly what I saw in the viewfinder.

Philosophically what interested me was depicting the water tunnel and the running child, the only necessary elements to reflect a mood of joy. I wanted to hide everything else, including clutters on the upper right side where people with prams, another child and a seagull are. Those were distractions for my story.

I tried exposing the running child using a subject mask in Adobe Lightroom. It worked, but the resulting image looked a bit fake, and worse, it ruined the mood.

The moral of the story is you need to know your place, your philosophy, your artistic stance before taking a picture. 

For me slowing down, having a strong sense of intent and being picky works. Often I return from my photo walks empty handed. That is ok. That is part of the process. But once in a while you will capture something beautiful, then you will realise why it was worth all the trouble.