Jean-Marc Bara Earns a Perfect Score for “Arriving or Departing”
Club member Jean-Marc Bara’s image Arriving or Departing earned a perfect score of 27 from our three judges for September’s competition. Jean Marc’s image was submitted into the Print Assigned Subject category.
Jean-Marc says about the image:
“This image is a tiled composite of nine photographs of the same section of an airport walkway at the CDG airport in Paris. This summer, my wife and I had a couple of hours wait for our plane at the airport and I took advantage of this opportunity to make some photographs.
A few days prior, I had made photographs of sets of windows with interesting reflections that I intended to use for our Club’s “Geometrics” Assigned Subject. So, when I saw passengers walking on the jet bridge, I immediately visualized tiling several shots of the same section. I stationed myself comfortably on a chair near the window overlooking the jet bridge and shot every time I liked the composition formed by the passengers walking on the jet bridge.
I shot about 70 photographs, some with a single passenger, some with couples and some with larger groups, but all on the same small section of the jet bridge. In these days of heightened security I was sure some French guard would eventually stop me from systematically shooting the stream of passengers boarding a plane, as my actions looked more like deliberate documentation than casual shooting. To my surprise no one objected.
Back home, I selected the photographs and played with the position of the tiles until I was pleased with the overall composition and the balance between pattern and randomness. In doing so I found I needed a tile with no one in it. I then realized I had forgotten to shoot one without passengers, so I cloned an empty tile in Photoshop.
Because the late afternoon light changed gradually during the half an hour or so I shot the photographs, I also had to take into account the progression from lighter to darker in tiling the composite.
By the way, to answer the question in the title of the photograph, all selected subjects are departing passengers, with the exception of the two airport employees pushing the wheelchairs at the opposite corners of the composite. Also, all passengers look like they have a chest-out military posture, when in fact they are leaned back as they are descending a slight incline.”
Congratulations Jean-Marc! Your image was added to the Perfect Score Gallery
Click on the image to the left to see Jean Marc’s image in full.
