The Float & The Surge

The Float

I wanted this image to be surrealistic. I think I succeeded. heh.
I had this idea about floating up above a scene… like a dream, or like that moment you leave your body at the end. It wouldn’t be a razor sharp focus moment, or be quite like your everyday vision at all. It would be… dreamy. Softer focus, with colors that reflect how you feel about the world as you look down.

In my case… that’s warm. I love fall-colored trees, picnic tables, leaves on the ground, life. It’s idyllic to me. And floating above it is like some modern surrealistic movie with either a tortured youth narrating his drifty, tortured tale (think: American Beauty)… or the ending of a love story where the main character dies at the end of some horrible disease. I really dislike the latter, BTW… won’t even watch them! But I do love The Float that only seems to happen in those kinds of movies. (Exception: Beetlejuice. That had a great Float at the beginning.) As you can imagine, I don’t get to enjoy The Float as often as I like.

The Surge

So now imagine my delight when I looked down from the New Croton Dam in New York and saw a scene worthy of THE FLOAT!!
I got so excited. Shot it different ways; vertical, horizontal, arranging the picnic tables different ways.

Noodling about with the processing took longer than I expected… and it ended up bolder than I thought it would.
I always get this particular feeling in my gut when a photo falls into place. It’s kind of a lift and and surge sort of sensation. That’s when I know I’m done. So this one was a bit more… vibrant than I thought it would be when I got “the surge”.

The Surge for The Float. A fair deal, wouldn’t you say?