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Author Topic: Gone  (Read 12933 times)

Bruce Cox

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Re: Gone
« Reply #40 on: May 14, 2013, 01:00:56 pm »

I like the whole scene and suggest vignetting all over as more representative.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Gone
« Reply #41 on: May 14, 2013, 02:23:17 pm »

Wow!
What a fascinating thread this has turned out to be. My thanks to Russ and Slobodan for showing how valuable civilized discourse can be.
My current favorite is now Russ's later version, inspired by Slobodan's (Sorry, Bruce --- nice try!)

Eric M.

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Riccardo

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Re: Gone
« Reply #42 on: May 15, 2013, 09:15:39 am »

I think that the original version of Russ is the right version.
Russ is not a beginner who posted a picture saying "It was a dark and stormy evening and I was struck by an abandoned house that reminded me of the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel." In this case, the first version of Slobodan would be the right one, because the version of Russ does not transmit any of this.
But, as everyone knows, Russ is not a rookie and in comment #19 he explained what he wanted to convey, and we find this in his first version.
The version of Slobodan may be more spectacular, but it lacks in truth and could not be otherwise, because Slobodan was not there.
The question is not about "which is the most beatiful?", but "which is the truest?", that is "which of the two reflects the vision of Russ?".
In my opinion, the lesser spectacularity of the first version is part of its strength.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Gone
« Reply #43 on: May 15, 2013, 10:07:53 am »

I agree that Russ's original is truer to the way the scene looked, and I suspect that is the way I would have photographed it if I had been there. But Slobodan's variant is a much more expressive image, emphasizing the abandonment and sense of desolation of the house. That fact is certainly an important part of the truth, and artistic license certainly permits the artist to emphasize important aspects more than others.

So if you want an "accurate," reportorial portrayal of the scene, Russ's original is the one that works for you. Russ himself is man enough to appreciate that multiple possibilities can come from the same "negative."

Eric M.

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RSL

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Re: Gone
« Reply #44 on: May 15, 2013, 11:46:31 am »

Arrggghh. I've walked by the two versions a couple dozen times since yesterday and in the vignetted version I miss the leading line made by the camera-left trees. So here's a third version. I've vignetted a bit, but not as much as in Slobodan's version. I've also added a sky gradient with a "multiply" blending mode to emphasize the clouds I was lucky enough to have that early afternoon. (By the time we got home and started unloading all the stuff we'd hauled up from Florida it was raining.)

Incidentally, I've finally realized why I think the bit of highway in the picture is necessary. Without it there's no way to explain those two fencelines.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2013, 11:48:13 am by RSL »
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Gone
« Reply #45 on: May 15, 2013, 01:22:13 pm »

I agree about the road. And I think this is the best version yet. It looks plausible (--- less vignetting ---), yet it has good drama in the clouds, which still seems to make a statement about the empty house, rather than taking attention away from it.

Eric M.


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Riccardo

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Re: Gone
« Reply #46 on: May 15, 2013, 01:51:07 pm »

I agree that Russ's original is truer to the way the scene looked, and I suspect that is the way I would have photographed it if I had been there. But Slobodan's variant is a much more expressive image, emphasizing the abandonment and sense of desolation of the house. That fact is certainly an important part of the truth, and artistic license certainly permits the artist to emphasize important aspects more than others.

So if you want an "accurate," reportorial portrayal of the scene, Russ's original is the one that works for you. Russ himself is man enough to appreciate that multiple possibilities can come from the same "negative."

Eric M.




I do not agree.
I don't consider the first version of Russ truer because more objective. I considered it more true because I assumed that would reflect Russ's vision (although after his "arrgggh!" I have some doubts  ;)).
The image of Slobodan is more spectacular and dramatic, but not more expressive and in fact Russ said that "it's a completely different picture about a completely different subject." So it is not more expressive in what was the vision of Russ and cannot be expressive according to the vision of Slobodan because Slobodan wasn't there.
Of course we can consider the file or the negative only raw material on which practising our creative talent, according with the Alain Briot's approach, but then why do not emphasize the abandonment and sense of desolation of the house with another touch of "artistic license"?
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RSL

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Re: Gone
« Reply #47 on: May 15, 2013, 09:15:34 pm »

I've always dismissed Ansel's dictum when it comes to street photography, but in landscape I have to accept it: "The negative is the score. The print is the performance." Nowadays we can substitute the word "file" for "negative."
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Gone
« Reply #48 on: May 16, 2013, 12:18:49 am »

You've now got at least two excellent performances out of this score, but I wouldn't display them together.

Eric M


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amolitor

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Re: Gone
« Reply #49 on: May 16, 2013, 06:25:54 am »

Glenn Gould thought (incorrectly, alas) that modern recording and playback technology would allow the listener to create customized performances of music, pulling one movement from one recording and another from another and so on.

This might fly in the face of.. everything .. but it occurs to me that taking the two prints, physically slicing them up, and collaging them back together might make an interesting piece, to make up the original scene again but with different slices from different interpretations. Not a photograph, necessarily, but something interesting.
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RSL

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Re: Gone
« Reply #50 on: May 16, 2013, 08:00:09 am »

Right, Eric. The most recent performance is the one that's going on the wall. The other two get stored in a flat file -- at least for now.

It's an interesting thought, Andrew, but not the kind of thing I do. I'm a "straight" photographer. Even when I do HDR I try to produce something that looks like a photograph instead of like an acid vision.
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Riccardo

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Re: Gone
« Reply #51 on: May 16, 2013, 11:04:23 am »

Right, Eric. The most recent performance is the one that's going on the wall. The other two get stored in a flat file -- at least for now.


As often happens, cheaters win.  ;D
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RSL

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Re: Gone
« Reply #52 on: May 16, 2013, 06:30:07 pm »

In the end, both recent copies are going up, but not in the same place. My wife locked on to the heavily vignetted version. She gets that one in her office to go with last year's color version with the cows. I get the other one on one of my downstairs walls.
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Rob C

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Re: Gone
« Reply #53 on: May 17, 2013, 04:59:41 am »

In the end, both recent copies are going up, but not in the same place. My wife locked on to the heavily vignetted version. She gets that one in her office to go with last year's color version with the cows. I get the other one on one of my downstairs walls.


Sadly, I have some b/whites of my girls on the walls along with two landscapes Ann liked, a painting my mother bought when she lived in Italy so long, long ago, and another pretty cool work that her mother had from the even more distant past; the dining hall (literally, the hallway) lives with a lovely mage of a tree and gnarled roots painted by my second-cousin who's made a good life out of art.

Sad, because I always feel that photographs don't really belong in a home: better suited to offices and public spaces. I feel it's all about venue, and that the home isn't the right one. Photographs are just too coldly modern for anything other than a city loft or other yuppy showplace.

Rob C

Riccardo

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Re: Gone
« Reply #54 on: May 17, 2013, 08:28:51 am »

I thought the same thing until ten years ago, then I realized that it's a matter of framing, not of venue. The photographs seem always coldly modern because they are always framed with cold frames.
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Rob C

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Re: Gone
« Reply #55 on: May 17, 2013, 08:56:12 am »

Riccardo -

Whilst I agree with you insofar as frames being ultra-important, both to subject as well as location (where they hang), I can't really make the mental leap to accepting them as good home deco.

As I explained, it's a sort of block in my mind that confines them to a less personal location, such as an office corridor or actual executive suite of rooms, a place where the message of ownership might suggest an appreciation of modern art and design - hipness. In a home, I find them mildly embarrassing, almost as if the author is seeking praise from his guests. In my own case, I know that it makes visiting tradesmen stop and ask about them, and I trot out the usual story about them being how I earned my keep. However, I detect a sense of disappointment, almost as it those guys had hoped the models had been my lovers, which they certainly had not.

The best place I saw for photographs was in a London ad agency - can't remember which, it was before I went out on my own - and somebody had walled a Norman Parkinson print which I recognized; this was back in late '59. It felt absolutely the perfect location for such imagery, a sense of rightness which has not really left me.

Perhaps there's a deeper truth here: we should stop trying to sell to individuals, but take our print stuff out on the road to business, just as one used to sell the photographic service that fed us.

Why didn't I think of that years ago?

Rob C

amolitor

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Re: Gone
« Reply #56 on: May 17, 2013, 10:28:37 am »

I'm sorry to hear that the models were not your lovers.
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Rob C

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Re: Gone
« Reply #57 on: May 17, 2013, 12:04:54 pm »

I'm sorry to hear that the models were not your lovers.



I like to imagine that so are they...

;-)

Rob C
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