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Author Topic: Kitchen Still Life  (Read 8400 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #20 on: April 26, 2012, 01:56:02 pm »

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to be the bad boy here...

Oh, my God, who are you, why are you posting under Ray's name and what have you done to Slobodan!?  ;D

Ray

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #21 on: April 26, 2012, 02:09:04 pm »

Oh, my God, who are you, why are you posting under Ray's name and what have you done to Slobodan!?  ;D

What! Are you implying that I'm not normally aggressive enough?  ;D
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Ray

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #22 on: April 26, 2012, 02:18:37 pm »

PS The photograph is not actually about the subjects, banal as they might be - it is about light, which is never banal  or uninteresting.

John

I understand the concept perfectly. Photography means, 'painting in light'. You've got a boring subject reasonably well-lit. There's no spectacular sunset rays illuminating the Olive Oil bottle. There's nothing special or distinctive at all.

Sorry to be so blunt.  ;D
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #23 on: April 26, 2012, 02:21:46 pm »

... Perhaps this view is a result of my leading an interesting life...

Ray, I am not sure if monkeying around counts as more interesting than being surrounded by virgins  ;D

Ray

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #24 on: April 26, 2012, 02:44:33 pm »

Ray, I am not sure if monkeying around counts as more interesting than being surrounded by virgins  ;D

Hhmm! Surrounded by virgins implies you are a school teacher. Not an enviable profession.
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Rob C

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #25 on: April 26, 2012, 03:35:51 pm »

Not at all. C'mon Rob. A fuzzy monkey amidst fuzzy trees. What's interesting about that?Okay! There's a certain interest in imagining shapes in the clouds. Maybe there's a face there. Maybe there's a monkey in the fuzzy trees. Crikey! There are far more interesting subjects.



The fuzz, of course.

I take no pleasure in cloud-reading; yes, there are certainly more interesting subjects than trees, monkeys (sharp or fuzzy), but they (for me) require a client chequebook to reach.

;-(

Rob C

Rob C

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #26 on: April 26, 2012, 03:38:45 pm »

Hhmm! Surrounded by virgins implies you are a school teacher. Not an enviable profession.



How silly; you just seek a complicated response! Why do you exclude other virgins?

Rob C

Ray

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #27 on: April 27, 2012, 01:45:23 am »

What I find fascinating about this subject matter of the common-place bottle of olive oil on the kitchen top, is not the picture, but the response to the picture.

It seems to be quite popular, with 80 views so far. My shot of a monkey testing the firmness of a well-endowed young lady's breasts, got a mere 56 views, and I suspect that number was inflated as a result of Slobodan's comment that the monkey seemed to know what he was doing.

Now you may think I've got a case of sour grapes. Not at all. I'm genuinely interested in these issues of the reasons for the popularity of certain works. I've always been struck by the absurdity of the high prices paid for certain ludicrous works of art that most people would automatically consider as crap, if some so-called expert had not given it the nod.

I suspect the truth is, we're often being conned. This is probably why I had no desire to become a professional photographer. Producing photos in order to sell bottles of olive oil, or women's make-up products, or fashionable clothes, is totally boring for me.

« Last Edit: April 27, 2012, 02:00:10 am by Ray »
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Rob C

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #28 on: April 27, 2012, 04:49:26 am »

What I find fascinating about this subject matter of the common-place bottle of olive oil on the kitchen top, is not the picture, but the response to the picture.

It seems to be quite popular, with 80 views so far. My shot of a monkey testing the firmness of a well-endowed young lady's breasts, got a mere 56 views, and I suspect that number was inflated as a result of Slobodan's comment that the monkey seemed to know what he was doing.

Now you may think I've got a case of sour grapes. Not at all. I'm genuinely interested in these issues of the reasons for the popularity of certain works. I've always been struck by the absurdity of the high prices paid for certain ludicrous works of art that most people would automatically consider as crap, if some so-called expert had not given it the nod.

I suspect the truth is, we're often being conned. This is probably why I had no desire to become a professional photographer. Producing photos in order to sell bottles of olive oil, or women's make-up products, or fashionable clothes, is totally boring for me.




Ray, you’re opening up the proverbial can of worms.

I think that much contemporary ‘art’ is crap, and that gurus have intentionally made a difficult subject even more difficult to navigate, to the extent that some prefer to avoid it altogether.

A trip to a reasonable art gallery will quickly restore a sense of values, something that will come directly from the viewer’s own, gut, response to the painting or whatever he’s looking at at the time. Talent and skill are obvious in themselves – it’s only where the cons are being perpetrated that middle-men are required staff. Photography has historically suffered from its apparent similarity to painting, and I think that’s probably the root cause of the different but twin standards. Painting well takes undeniable skill; making a photograph requires little actual dexterity and only some observational skills in design and pattern. We probably all exercise the latter every day, even down to the act of buying a shirt, not that I advise buying one of those every day, but you get the idea.

The actual validity of the painter’s or the photographer’s vision may be the same, but the painter’s success is more difficult to achieve and depends solely on his abilities, not partly on those of a range of mechanical and electronic support systems. In that sense, I believe that the problems associated with digital photography as art are more pronounced than for wet processes photography as art. This concatenation of art and mechanics is why it’s so difficult to raise photography to the level of painting in the matter of how it’s received.

Subject matter. I have made similar observations on viewing figures here, and I can generally see that landscape-style stuff generates a higher viewer base. That fits in perfectly with the name of the site, why expect anything else, I ask myself? At the same time, I note that nudes also garner high figures (the higher the figure the higher the viewer numbers, too) and that’s also normal.

On the specific matter of Olive Oil and other Popeye figures, the attraction can be found in different areas of such works. There’s an undeniable attraction in ‘European’ cultural elements, signifiers of a different, possibly vanishing way of life drawing on old and largely lost commodities such as shown in this image and also in old drinking vessels etc. in other posts There’s also the attraction for some photographers in what they see as ‘lighting’; however natural or impromptu it might actually be, it’s credited to the snapper, with the viewers asking themselves how/if they could/would have achieved the same result. 

But then, there’s also romance in the past; I remember it well!

Rob C

John R Smith

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #29 on: April 27, 2012, 07:46:52 am »

Ray

May I just say that I really enjoyed your shot of the monkey and the young lady's breasts. It seemed to me to belong to the genre that we used to call "candid photography", and it was a great example of that - very well seen and expertly captured.

I enjoy the sort of debate which this thread has provoked. My own view is that we should be celebrating the diversity and range of the arts in general, and photography in particular - not feeling anxious or threatened by the plethora of subjects, methods and concepts which the visual arts have produced in recent times. I don't think anybody here is trying to "con" anyone, least of all me.

John
« Last Edit: April 27, 2012, 08:13:45 am by John R Smith »
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Ray

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #30 on: April 27, 2012, 08:56:51 am »

Fair enough, John. Glad no offense has been taken.

Cheers!
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cantrellahinton

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #31 on: March 11, 2013, 03:02:17 am »

Great photography!!

Rob C

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #32 on: March 11, 2013, 04:56:02 am »

And where are you, John?

I don't seem to have picked up on your name in a while, are you okay?

Best wishes,

Rob C

Patricia Sheley

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #33 on: March 11, 2013, 08:50:31 am »

Hmmm
       ...said that the subjects of the picture seem to her like a group of people, and it disturbs her that the jug appears to be facing out of the frame.

I must admit it never crossed my mind until she mentioned it.
John

I was glad not to have read the comments before spending some time with this one questioning what it was that was triggering my response.

Glad that someone brought this forward John, as the response is as enlightening as your image is a nice place for contemplation. The portion of your comment I included above was even more so as I had reacted almost immediately in a similar way. Our lives are so "busy and interesting" that we move through them asleep as it were unwilling or disinterested enough to take the time to wonder at the hidden within ordinary things.

This for me was viscerally confrontation. I wished to understand how I might paint a sense of the same. For you it was about the light. For me it was about what you were saying with the light...as the same group of words might be arranged by one person to no effect whatsoever, while another might tuck them next to each other differently to create a visual melody, song, piece of poetry or eulogy. Yet it is clear that the viewer must have worked to attain some level of awareness to be receptive to what may be beyond the surface, as I would have needed to take the time to have obtained some level of fluency in the Japanese language to more fully enjoy the profound beauty of an haiku.

I like that this offered the chance to contemplate how this might represent how our level of awareness , our consciousness, our ability to sense the vibrations depending on how far we are willing to see beyond the surface.

And I fully understand that it is the light that was the focus of your energy, but it is what you wrote with that focused energy. A different story, with the same characters would have been written six hours later in that same location.

Also, I did notice that the message I took seemed most clear in a small intimate image rather than large, as if I , in the small image, was an onlooker, an intruder almost, to a very private conversation.
« Last Edit: March 11, 2013, 09:13:41 am by Patricia Sheley »
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William Walker

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #34 on: March 11, 2013, 10:28:30 am »

And where are you, John?

I don't seem to have picked up on your name in a while, are you okay?

Best wishes,

Rob C


+1
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stamper

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #35 on: March 11, 2013, 12:24:38 pm »

And where are you, John?

I don't seem to have picked up on your name in a while, are you okay?

Best wishes,

Rob C


I think John terminated his membership last year in a huff. I don't remember why but I think somebody upset him and off he went. If I have got it wrong then apologies to him.  :)

John R Smith

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #36 on: March 11, 2013, 12:36:07 pm »


Rob, Patricia, et al -

It is very kind of you to ask after me. I am OK thank you, I have been having some issues with a bad back but I am otherwise in good spirits. And no, I certainly have not "terminated my membership in a huff", I don't recall being upset by anyone or anything. The folks here are very nice people and I have always found LuLa to be an excellent place to hang out.

Slobodan chased me some time ago and I gave him the same reply. I've just been taking a bit of a break from photography because I felt I was getting a bit stale, is all. So I packed away the Hasselblads for a while and did other things, and let the batteries recharge. Luckily I don't have to take photographs for a living or anything.

Funnily enough I got out on Friday afternoon and gave the 500 a bit of exercise, the first time for ages. And it felt good.

All best, John
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Riaan van Wyk

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #37 on: March 11, 2013, 01:51:57 pm »

It's good to read your words again John. Glad you are OK, I'm one of many who has been wondering where you are, hurry back!

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #38 on: March 11, 2013, 02:05:49 pm »

... I've just been taking a bit of a break from photography because I felt I was getting a bit stale...

Why does this remind me of the "one man's trash is another man's treasure?" In other words, even if your work has become "stale," I am absolutely positive it would still be way above some other work posted here.

Besides, you do not have to post photographs for us to have the benefit of your wisdom. Words count too, you know. Although it seems at times we have too many of those here (words, that is), it is the wise ones that are often missing.

Or, perhaps, in your modesty, you adhere to Plato's adage: "A wise man talks because he has something to say; a fool talks because he has to say something."?

RSL

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Re: Kitchen Still Life
« Reply #39 on: March 11, 2013, 02:46:14 pm »

I've just been taking a bit of a break from photography because I felt I was getting a bit stale, is all.

Don't we all feel that way from time to time? Best thing I've found to do when that happens, which it frequently does, is drag out a few books by the greats and run through them, then get back on the horse.

Welcome back, John.
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