Motion Capture

This photo was taken in Paris in February 2007 at the Centre Pompidou. My family and I were there to see a Tintin exhibition, which was superb, lots of original drawings and page masters, really incredible Herge archive material. My Sony DSC-72P at work again with f/2.8 and 1/8s, set to ISO 100 with +2 exposure bias.

I love the way that the camera can capture images that the eye can't really see. The exposure is long enough that people moving across the shot appear blurred, but some standing or pausing are frozen fairly clearly. The man in the foreground turned to look at the camera, conscious that he was in the shot, but not enough to stop.

The over-exposure removes the definition from the outside world, although the odd person here and there is still visible in the distance. There are almost no objects in the shot so it becomes all about the people and what the viewer imagines about them.

I'd like to thank Orson Welles, without whom this would not have been possible

Welles filmed Kafka's 'The Trial' in Paris in 1962, using the abandoned Gare du Quai d'Orsay for many scenes due to insufficient funds to work in a studio. The old station was scheduled for demolition until Jacques Duhamel, Minister for Cultural Affairs ruled against it, no doubt because of its use by Welles and other filmmakers, and also for a time as an auction house and the base for a theatre company.

This photo was taken in April 2005 in the cafe situated behind one of the clock faces that bracket the frontage to the Seine, using my Sony DSC-P72 when 3.2 mega-pixels was a lot. Limitations of memory stick capacity meant I had it on VGA mode unfortunately. F/5.6 and 1/125s for anyone who's interested.