Vantage Point

This picture is titled "Phantom, Cape Disappointment, Oregon, 2006" and was taken of this man (a fellow photographer) who walks up the spiraled stair case of the North Head Lighthouse. In his blog, the photographer writes: "Using the image stabilization feature of my camera, I was able to hand-hold this image at one full second in the dark stairwell of the lighthouse as a fellow photographer, unaware of my presence, came walking up the steps. There is some minor blurring of the stairs and wall, but it supports the central point of the image: movement in time. When my fellow photographer saw me, he stopped in his tracks and looked up, blurring only his face. He graciously apologized for “ruining” my picture. Yet he gave me exactly what I wanted. A phantom. It is the face and the shadow coming out of the body that gives up the ghost here – a function of my high vantage point."

The photographer purposely did not control his subject in a way that "composed" an exact, still picture relative to time. Rather, due to the movement (namely of the subject's face), and high vantage point, a phantom picture resulted, and the photographer depictivley "solves" the message communicated in this image--accepting the results of the random movement of his unknowing subject.