Author: Aryan Lnu

Waiting for dinner – The lams of Ludlow street 2 by Thomas Holton

The picture depicts one of the boys in the Lam household studying while his younger sister waits for dinner to be prepared. The picture shows that although they were in one room, the curtain placed between the bed and desk separated the children. A hint to what their life outside of this picture actually was like: while the younger daughter lived with their mother, the boys lived separately with their father. The picture also shows that 5 years after the original album, the children are now in different stages of life, with the older brother in a more tumultuous period of life in regard to his schooling and studying while waiting for dinner. The younger sister was, however, just lying on the bed, waiting, unaware of the stress to come, as shown by the separation through a curtain. The lighting in this picture also helps match this theme and further personify it. The darker, blue tones on the brother’s side show the more stressed and tiring life he leads, while the brighter, orange light on the sister’s side shows the happy, innocent life she leads.

The two main techniques employed in this photo are the rule of thirds and diagonal lines. The positioning of the sister is such that the first thing you notice is her looking at the camera. The placement is at the intersection of the line on the curtain and the beam behind her. Although the photo does not use the center dominant eye method, it does use a variation in which the sister’s eye is placed near the intersection point of the rule of thirds, which creates the illusion that she is looking at you and draws you in further. The diagonal line created by the curtain with respect to the direction of the beams in the background creates depth in the picture. This is aided by the angle of the bed, which is parallel to the curtain but perpendicular to the beams in the back.