Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Krug on April 05, 2016, 04:44:23 pm

Title: African Tribal Ritual Masks
Post by: Krug on April 05, 2016, 04:44:23 pm

Mystery, melodrama and magic perhaps ?

Title: Re: African Tribal Ritual Masks
Post by: Jeremy Roussak on April 08, 2016, 02:55:14 pm

Interesting. I'm not sure the very shallow depth of field really works, though.

Jeremy

Title: Re: African Tribal Ritual Masks
Post by: brandtb on April 08, 2016, 09:37:21 pm

I don't get any "mystery, melodrama, magic" from these photographs.  The objects are somewhat interesting but the way they are shot isn't so much - in particular the focus points. The first has potential (esp. black and white and shot straight on) but the choice of a focus point on the mouth which is least prominent/graphically interesting part of the mask? I probably would have tried to get the brow arches/nose sharp as that is one of the most graphically interesting elements of the piece. And with such shallow depth of field? The other mask shot at oblique angle doesn't really do anything for it - and again the very strange location of focus points. The red color is nice though. I don't get the sense that there is at base level an appreciation of the important structural and graphic elements of each mask...and therefore arbitrary focus points.