January 26, 2016 – ©2016 Eliot Crowley

Someone recently accused me of,”always trying something new.” I know it was and is a compliment. But what I thought remarkable was, he was right, and I didn’t identify it for myself, until he said it.

This is one of those times when I was just trying something to see what would happen. Carrying a bank light on my back with the power source in side the backpack I was walking around Santa Barbara and this guy asked if I would like to make his photo, doing something wild. Of course I said, yes. And this is what he did.

Learning from mistakes has always been a theme of mine. Always make new mistakes, and learn from them. In this case the light flared dramatically into my lens. But in this case, I think the mistake actually adds to the frenetic action of the scene. There is this guy standing on one hand kicking his feet into the air. A police car right behind him. Large colorful items in the street with the man, palm trees and a stop sign. There is a lot going on. Add to that the random flaring of the lens from the light I was carrying on my back and it looks like someone is throwing little pieces of glitter or balls of light in the scene.

At first blush one might think there is a lot wrong with this photo. Besides the flaring there are lots of flattening issues. The palm tree coming out of his foot, the stop sign flattened against his thigh, the policeman’s face is even visible between the man’s legs and his arm. I took all of this into consideration when I decided to show this image to the world. I think it will be one of those the viewer will either love or hate.

I’m good with that.