{"id":3724,"date":"2025-06-30T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/?p=3724"},"modified":"2025-06-18T11:22:47","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T09:22:47","slug":"watching-back-from-the-tram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/watching-back-from-the-tram\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching back from the tram"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes, you take a photo not because it’s well composed, but because its meaning strikes you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Passenger in the tram, Oslo 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This photo follows a few basic rules of composition: framing the subject, frames within frames, subject centered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo explained<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But that’s not why I took it. When I moved to Scotland many years ago, I was surprised by how white it was. I grew up in Paris. It’s very multicultural, there are people from all parts of the world living there. When I went to school, half my class were descendants of some exotic part of the world. That was normal to me. I got used to Scotland’s whiteness, but it always rang wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oslo is much worse. It is so unbelievably white. Apart from recent refugees, there are no colours. I was talking to a taxi driver in Oslo once. He was from Rwanda and had ended up in Norway when he fled his country. Europe has a scheme in which it distributes refugees across its members and even though he had requested France or the UK, he was sent to Norway. He described what a shock it was when he landed there in December with his family coming straight from Central Africa’s summer. The reason he was a taxi driver was that he was a nurse in Rwanda, but his qualifications weren’t recognised in Norway, so he was requalifying to become a nurse again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when I saw that guy on the tram, I thought he was out of place. I had to take a photo to record the moment. He watched me and didn’t seem to happy about it. I guess he was wondering why I was taking his photo for no reason. He might have got worried, even, and I wondered if I should keep the photo. But then it wa taken and I didn’t know who he was, so whether I kept it or not made no difference to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#PhotosExplained #Photography #Analysis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, you take a photo not because it’s well composed, but because its meaning strikes you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photosexplained","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3724"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3744,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724\/revisions\/3744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}