Prompt
· English
Seen in a wall mirror at an angle, the mirror edge cutting the frame diagonally, of a 50-year-old man of Indigenous North American descent sitting alone in the back of a crowded night bus. The man has light beige skin, a lean wiry build, and a heart-shaped face with a pointed chin. He is crying with happiness, tears on his cheeks and a trembling smile, with high arched eyebrows and hazel eyes. His hair is densely packed tight coils, very long waist-length, dyed deep teal, and tied in a low ponytail, with a goatee and a thin silver nose ring. He wears a chunky cream knit sweater and dark corduroy trousers. He holds a paperback book with a crumpled receipt tucked into its pages. The bus seat next to him has a worn vinyl texture. Water droplets on the window glass refract the orange streetlights outside. The shot is taken from far away with a 200mm telephoto lens, stacking the background layers flat. A single bare tungsten bulb hanging above provides hard warm light and sharp shadows below every object. A rhythm of similar shapes repeats at regular intervals across the frame. Shot on a medium format digital camera with shallow depth of field, warm color temperature, and sharp focus on the reflection.
