Passing the time.

Unable to find my creative side this week, I figured that I would use a picture I took last year. Recently purchasing a DSLR I experimented with the exposure, aperture, and f stop of the camera and ended up with a "time-lapsed" image of people passing in a mall. Although being that it was a pretty expensive camera it’s still hard to take a clear image without a tripod in this manner. I’m not quite sure what made me decide to take a picture like this of this, but it might’ve been because I find human traffic interesting. I find it curious how people move while certain objects stay still. And also the opposite, how people can be perfectly still while others around them are moving. The dispersal of people also makes for an interesting sight. Everyone’s line of paths are all unique, we don’t see all people following one another forming a uniform line. Everyone is moving about doing up to their own desires. I wonder if prolonging this image for a longer period of time would just turn the picture out to be a big blur. Even in this short time lapse individuals lose their identity and appear as ghostly images. This is a moving world and there is little time for standing around. It makes me think of how things are always advancing and people looking for new things to make life less monotonous. Everything changes in one way or another.

The mall seems to contain its own world. No matter day or night, bright lights and crowds make up the essence of the environment. And could you guess where this mall is? Probably not, since most malls take this familiar form and shape. Logically, there should be a large walk way and outsized pillars supporting the infrastructure and separating levels and stores. And what is a mall without a barrage of “kiosks” in the middle lining the whole walk way? I probably wouldn’t even have to explicitly mention what was pictured. Taking a closer look at the kiosks, it seemed like everything they were selling was targeted for tourists, i.e. keychains, postcards, jewelry, clothing. And why do they have a kind of sun shade when they’re indoors? What kind of setting are they trying to provide to that whole mall atmosphere? Some of them look to be left unattended to as well. And this is a thing I notice in my own “walking through the mall” experience as well.

Addressing a recent post as well, in Carol’s photo entry Chris brought up the curiosity with the “blending” of "nature and modernization.” If you look hard enough you can see in the top right corner a small little plant amongst the midst of everything man-made. What are they trying to accomplish by having it there? It could also just be fake and just for decoration, but why have it there if it serves no purpose? I guess people want that feeling of being outside while they’re inside. Almost like containing nature, how ironic…But, although being in another country, this mall still looks like any other you would find in the U.S. and probably all around the world. Specifically this is in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The mall sits underneath the other infamous twin towers (not to be confused with the ones that were in New York). It seems to be a universal structure containing what seems to be the desire of most tourists. Sometimes people travel to get away from the “normal” life but find themselves in a similar atmosphere in place away from home.