DRAFT

It’s foggy
Abandoned
Dark and cold
Not a single soul outside
Not a single creek or murmur
A mist of fear and absence
But the lights , the bright lights that led the way
The lamp posts were like stars in the night sky
The cart hangs alone
Still and quiet
The star of this dark show

REVISION

What was once so natural is now depleting right before my eyes. We used to play around with the carts while my parents shopped for sales and antiques. The lot was large, noisy, lively. The lot doay, is now a dark place. The crisp, raw air wreaked of petrochemicals. The fogg was intense and powerful, covering the area around. A mist of fear and absence. The lamp posts glistened with their bright lights. A torch through the fog. The cart stood alone. This was an abandoned lot, a cursed lot. What was once so lively was now so grave.

At first I wrote out what I saw in a poetry format, it helped me list details and describe the visuals. The challenge was incorporating concrete descriptions and to expand on the ideas. I choose to change the writing style to elevate the story and to bring out the descriptions.

Draft:

To me, this image symbolizes the coronavirus and its scare on people. This is a good picture that shows quarantine and how it is supposed to be. It also reminded me of a zombie movie, because in the movies the streets and parking lots and just outside, in general, are desolated and gives a very horrid feeling. I get the feeling of emptiness and social restraint when I look at this picture because the parking lot at a supermarket is completely empty and there is fog; the fog amplifies the effect of the “danger” of being outside at this time in history. 

Revision: 

I see an empty steel shopping cart in an empty parking lot. The paint that is used to put the lines in the lot is white. There is so much fog that the lights in the parking lot look like they are far away but you can tell they are close because there is one that is close to the cart. The fog is so hazy that the light from the lamps is getting blurred and distorted. This scene looks very scary to me. It makes me feel that something bad has been happening to the area and in the area and the weather is always like this. Now that I’ve read the title of the picture, I think this might represent some effects of climate change and how climate change will make the future dark like this. 

Reflection:

I decided to actually include some visual descriptions to make it imaginable. The lights and the fog really speak to me so I gave that more than one sentence. And honestly, I still don’t get the point of the picture.

Draft 1

It was a cold and gloomy night , the sky was so cloudy no one can even see past the mist . A closer look at the picture show the weather was extremely unpleasant , a empty parking lot cover by heavy mist , light was shrouded in the mist . Among the barren parking lot , one shopping cart stood , nobody out , no cars seems like a curfew night , the ground was dump reminiscent of a rainy night .

Revision .

The picture showing a severe weather , nobody outside , the sky whispering to the world about the danger that was about to unleash destruction upon everything that came in his way . The clouds growled with the thunder .

Reflexion .

The picture was clear enough to describe , and i understand that the author wanted to show a potential storms , you can see at the horizon something was coming.

Class 9.1

Paragraph 1 (draft):

Immediately, my eyes catch onto the lone shopping cart. It’s the only shopping cart in the entire parking lot. There aren’t any cars crowding around the shopping cart and there aren’t any individuals walking around either. The place is entirely empty, except for the single shopping cart.  It’s extremely foggy; I can’t see past the fog and it only makes me wonder what else is around. I can only assume it’s cold as well, because the fog is so strong it must mean it might’ve rained or it will rain. There are bright lights, which are clearly street lights to show some sort of light within the picture. There are multiple streetlights, maybe around ten, and there are some that are rather close to the shopping cart and some that seem about half a mile away from the main object of the picture.

Paragraph 2 (revision):

            Given that I now know where the photograph is taken, it makes me curious as to why there is nothing else around, people or cars or even a wondering animal, considering it’s at an outlet center. Outlets are usually packed with people, even if the weather is glum. The entire picture is depressing to see because there’s only one shopping cart surrounded by streetlights. The lights remind me of spotlights, large and bright, like on a stage with singers and actors. But the imagery of a stage gives off a delighted feel because most actors and singers love doing the things they do; they bring joy to other people with forms of entertainment. This lone shopping cart, gray and motionless, depicts how loneliness can be so dull and gloomy. It’s showing that even if the light is so close, it’s always so hard to get to. I see that the shopping cart is facing away from the bright, LED fluorescent beams. Sometimes, it’s hard to see the light when one doesn’t want to see it. The weather plays a large part within the image. Assuming that it’s a brisk winter day or maybe the beginning of spring, the shopping cart must be chilly and damp to touch due to the coming perspiration. It is so entirely foggy that seeing past the dense murkiness is almost impossible, except for the lights. They are burning bright. The lights are the one positive structure in the image, almost like they embody hope – it’s not always going to be dark and cold.

Paragraph 3 (reflection):

Describing the picture wasn’t hard for me, it’s the ‘in depth’ part that always seems to get me. There’s always so many interpretations and you want to think that you made this great discovery, but it barely scratches the surface. There’s so much more going on and the more you look, the more you want to read into it. I would say the revision was challenging, given that it’s always hard to understand the deeper meaning within pictures and literary texts but it’s also fun to see how far one’s mind can go. I chose to revise my description by portraying the hidden isolation within the image. It felt clear to me that the shopping cart was alone, and the photographer wanted us to see how lonely it was and how cold it must’ve felt. I felt like I could relate to it, the shopping cart, because I remember times where I felt cold and alone, and the feeling was horrendous. But just as the light depict on the picture, there’s a brighter side to everything.

Before: An eerie foggy parking lot, with a grey shopping cart being the subject of the photograph. The shopping cart defies two of society’s norms of parking between the white lines of the parking lot and returning your shopping cart to the coral. In the distance lamps light up small patches of the sky only to be muffled by the dense fog, except for one rebellious lamp, which refused to light up, ironically drawing the most attention to itself. In the foreground you can really see the lack of uniformity within the asphalt, due to the discoloration and cracks.

Revision: An eerie foggy parking lot, with a grey shopping cart being the subject of the photograph. The lack of color and mixing of many shades of black and white adds to the feeling of eeriness and chaos erupting from pollution. The shopping cart defies two of society’s norms of parking between the white lines of the parking lot and returning your shopping cart to the coral, which furthers the idea of chaos. In the distance lamps light up small patches of the sky only to be muffled by the dense fog, except for one rebellious lamp, which refused to light up, ironically drawing the most attention to itself. The lamp accomplished the exact opposite of what it intended, which can be considered chaotic. In the foreground you can really see the lack of uniformity within the asphalt, due to the discoloration and cracks. Chaos can also be consider to be a lack of uniformity.

Broken Street Lamp DRAFT

No people – except photographer

No cars

Fog – cool air

Early morning hours

Store closed or open 

Broken street light

Cool breeze

Buzzing noise from working street lamps

No food left, no humans left to shop, end of life?

But who is taking the pic, who is turning on the lights

Apocalypse, end of humanity

Broken Street Lamp REVISION

In the wee hours of the morning, before crowds of panicked Brooklyn shoppers arrive, a young supermarket employee snaps a quick picture on his phone of a lonely abandoned shopping cart in the parking lot.  As a amateur photographer, he thinks it’s an artsy picture that he can cleverly caption for his Instagram account with joking hashtag of #COVID19 or #Apocalypse. He is acutely aware he’s alone and actually inhales the dense March fog.  He’s not scared at this moment that he’s inhaling a havoc-wreaking virus. Within one hour he’ll put on a cheap mask and have hundreds of fellow New Yorkers breathing on him as he bags their quarantine groceries. But for now, he’s relaxed, at peace and calm.  His attention turns towards the upwards buzzing of the halogen street lamps. He looks up to the lamps and notices one is broken. He thinks to himself that won’t be fixed anytime soon. Usually he has to report an outage like this to his manager. In that instant, he is snatched out of his calmed state and back to reality.  This scared young employee goes down a deeper darker hole and thinks what if this street lamp never gets fixed, What if in two weeks time no maintenance crew is present to fix it because we are on full lockdown. What if no one ever returns? Will all the streetlights go dark one morning? Is this really the #Apocalypse???

Broken Street Lamp REFLECTION

This was a little difficult because I took this pic and went towards a creative writing piece.  Not sure if that was the intent of the exercise. Even knowing the title of the picture, it was hard for me in these uncertain times to not relate this picture to our current health pandemic we are facing.  I was happy how this turned out though I’m not sure I hit the mark in terms of the assignment. Very hard to concentrate these days on tasks…