Preparing the New Home
This photo seemed appropriate to start off life on our new site.
The way of doing things here may seem unusual still and some things are a bit shaky, but they work anyway, despite the appearance. The scaffolding may be thrown together quickly, but it does its job, and the man is busy at work, and even if he perches precariously, the fruit of his efforts is visible below. In any case it brings a sense of excitement to the ordinary.
Pete
This is a perfect representation of how I have felt this week trying to configure our 15-year-old critique activity from the threaded format it was created in and succeeded with to a flat format. And the discomfort I've felt is a tiny microcosm of what the admins must feel in trying to build this dirigible as they fly it. Yet we persist, like the painter in this image, and refit our HOUSE as best we can for ongoing occupancy.
The photo itself is sharply caught with good color and tone. The decisive moment is captured with that wary downward thrust of his foot. The composition is balanced, with each set of precariously connected sticks leading our eye to the next and its unreliable-looking connectors. Your mastery of metaphor excels.
I agree with all that, and will add that I feel like the abstraction also enhances the appeal of this image.
With "abstraction" I mean that we see the painter and his activity, and the wall he is working on, but we don't see the bigger context:
is this a house or some kind of other building? (At first I thought it was the hull of a ship, but that can't be the case).
The letters are also intriguing, because the message and words are not complete.
And of course you gotta love the combination of a man in a green shirt with a bright red arrow.
Those rickety scaffolding structures and the way workers balance on them, never cease to amaze.
I'll join in with Minnie on several counts here:
- appreciation for your image : it shows good photographic instinct to focus on a shadow and not show the subject
- a warm welcome in our club
- reassurance that this thread will only get better with time (and it starts anew every wednesday)
- more reassurance that we welcome any feedback that is honest and polite: there are not thresholds here.
Hope to see more of you.
Roel
This is an odd image, that appeals to all of us who have ever looked up at the sky and saw animals and other structures in the shapes of clouds.
Focusing on steam and throwing the background out of focus, results in interesting lightplay.
We can quickly see what this is, i.e. reflections on moving water, but that does not mean that it is not an abstract. The image still offers us plenty of scope to ignore its physical form and let our imagination see another subject, an emotion, or just concentrate on it and let the mind wander uncontrolled. So for me it is still an abstract, if you allow it to be, or just colours on the surface of water, if you are happier in the realistic world, and either way, there is enough to please both types of viewer.
The red patch doesn’t worry me. Yes, it draws the eye, but why not? Where is a better place to start viewing the image?
Pete
This is tremendous! It is a technique I have never seen before, and that alone would make it interesting, but it is far more than the technique. The subject matter is straight out of Edward Hopper‘s sketchbook, as others have already noted, and you have created that same feeling of isolation and mystery that Hopper achieved. We see the figures and assume connections, but cannot be sure. Is there affection or indifference or animosity between them? We cannot tell and that leaves us to ponder and think about the image.
Hopper made his paintings slightly surreal, with the subdued palette and flat areas of colour with little detail, then sharp shadows. Your technique is almost the opposite, with tiny slivers of colour, but achieves a similar surreal effect. The thin slices give a prism like effect, and the colours begin to mix and make new ones, and is almost impressionistic. Perhaps I should leave out the almost. In any case the image dances in front of our eyes, and even the sharpest parts are not really sharp, and we are left to interpret, and guess the details, giving another reason to ponder the image and another level of interaction.
Thanks, I really enjoyed this one (and others on your linked website too)
Pete
The sepia tone and the hat lead us to think that it is a scene from the 19th century. The first idea was a fisherman, but then a dark corner of my memory banks waved a flag, and I could see the artist Monet - searching for his lilies and maybe being forced to imagine them. Here is a link to a photo of Monet on MoMa, wearing the hat that rang a bell here. Monet’s hat
The fact we only see the back of the man and his unusual hat means we think about the image, which is good.
Yes, I would clone out that bit of plant on the right too, and in the bottom left corner, that little stone on top of the big flat one distracts my eye, and spoils the strong leading line of the water’s edge a bit. But that is nitpicking, and the image is a fine one.
Pete
There are some real gems in this week’s thread, and it is a great start for our new home on DPRevived! And this is one of those gems.
One interesting feature is that all the detail is in the background, the road, but that doesn’t distract from the real subjects, the dark black shadows dominating the frame.
Since the subjects are devoid of detail, there is plenty of room for us to interpret the shapes as we wish, which is fun. We assume it is a man with a dog, but is it? Maybe the man is leading an elephant by the trunk? Or is he tied to a branch and trying to pull himself free? Or maybe he is trying to pull a person out of the water, whose outstretched hand is clutching at the rope? Or is the man tied to some kind of demonic creature?
None of this would be possible if the subjects were in sharp detail and note shown as shadows.
As to writing comments, don’t worry and just write what you feel about an image. There is no right or wrong, if it is your opinion. I am sure there will be loads of people who think what I wrote above is a pile of rubbish, but do I care? No. I know my opinion is no better than anyone else’s, but it is my opinion and I can stand by that. Maybe people agree, maybe they disagree, maybe they will argue and cause me to reconsider. It is all good.
Pete
This is really cool. Having seen the title, I could immediately see the puppy and in a detail, which is uncanny for random shapes in steam. It works really well against the busy and brightly coloured bokeh, which is counter intuitive, as I would have expected it to overpower the steam, and the fact it provides the puppy’s eye is almost too good to be true.
Pete
A gloriously chaotic swamp, which will have Minnie booking a plane ticket to Holland! It is beckoning with those saturated colours. But there is a problem. The human orderly element has erected a perfectly ordered fence to keep us away from the attractions of the chaos. The photo has become an illustration for the human species’ continued attempts to control nature and is wary of anything outside our control.
Pete
Minniev said
"That is oh so creative. I spotted the pup right away, hiding beneath and among the colorful bokeh in yellows and oranges. Still trying to make out the methodology (double/ multiple exposure? Stacked images in an editor? Special processing in camera or computer?) It doesn't really matter in terms of critique but I'm a curious sort and I don't feel knowledgeable enough about your kind of photography to offer as much as I sometimes do in terms of critique. I do like the repetition of curves shapes in the pup part, and the containment of the bright colors in the non-pup part, making them complementary halves of the same whole. It has a 2010 Space Odyssey vibe (that tells you how old I am). Thanks for sharing, and are you the same David Wright who shared the unusual color work on the Old C&C section?"
Yes, that's me. (The delay in responding was b/c I don't understand how things work here.)
This is a single image (I have dozens more...) By trial and error I figured out that an exposure of about 1/100 sec gave long enough lines to give a dynamic feel to the mist particles. and I first took some images against a sterile background before discovering this lovely OOF tree. I used manual focus, and snapped when I thought the shape was interesting.
David
Thanks. I got lucky with the background working so well. I'm not adverse to doing a little Photoshop work to enhance my vision, but in this series of 'coffee mist' images, they are all untouched in post but for some unsharp masking and NR. I took about 100 images overall, and maybe a dozen were keepers.
David
PLEASE LET US CONCLUDE our operations for Week 780 here.
It is Wednesday.
The new thread for Week 781 has just been opened.
It has been moved to the dedicated Photo Critiques Forum:
dprevived.com/t/wednesday-cc-no-theme-thread-781-revived-002-on-2023-04-12/1771/#post-13900
Please join us there for more peer-to-peer photo C&C.
Light Painting
