Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: RSL on February 24, 2014, 02:57:03 pm
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Not much here, but for some reason I can't identify it appeals to me. . . at least enough to post it.
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Seems to me something of a matter of motif-in-absentia.
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Seems to me something of a matter of motif-in-absentia.
Man, that's my landscapes-without-models syndrome!
;-)
Rob C
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That's about it, Walter. It reminds me of a large etching in a gallery in the town of Mount Dora, Florida, where I shot this picture. The etching gives me the same feeling the photograph does, the tracks are there and the train has departed.
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This is one of those intriguing images English teachers would use to stimulate creative writing. There must be a thousand stories down those tracks! A very appealing image!
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This is one of those intriguing images English teachers would use to stimulate creative writing. There must be a thousand stories down those tracks! A very appealing image!
+1.
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Yes... exactly. A lot of stories there. Like why is the shell of that train car (if that's what it is), sitting off the tracks?
Well done.
Mike.
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Yes an intriguing image. :) The question that formed in my mind was if you had moved six feet to the right - if it was possible without being hit by a train - what was there to be seen further down the track? Something better? As it is the image is a "mystery" of sorts and I suppose that was your intention Russ? As I said intriguing. :) BTW I like the processing.
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Yes an intriguing image. :) The question that formed in my mind was if you had moved six feet to the right - if it was possible without being hit by a train - what was there to be seen further down the track? Something better? As it is the image is a "mystery" of sorts and I suppose that was your intention Russ? As I said intriguing. :) BTW I like the processing.
;-) Now, now, stamper, let's not get this thread off-track. You can always start another thread to discuss those sorts of things. ;-)
Rob C
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This is one of those intriguing images English teachers would use to stimulate creative writing. There must be a thousand stories down those tracks! A very appealing image!
Well said.
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A really good image, but Terry's comment is a pearl!
This is one of those intriguing images English teachers would use to stimulate creative writing. There must be a thousand stories down those tracks! A very appealing image!
Tony Jay
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Thanks all. I'd walked on by a few paces before something grabbed me and made me back up and make a snap. And, Stamper (sorry Rob), for the first time in at least a year I went into Color Efex Pro and ran through a series of filters just to see what would happen. The Dark Contrast filter grabbed me because the result really fit the scene. I used that, and then Silver Efex to finish the job.
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The questions this image raises illustrate quite well the value of "ambiguity" that Russ often speaks of in street photography. To me, it's the questions and multiple possibilities that make the image riveting.
Nice work, Russ!
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The questions this image raises illustrate quite well the value of "ambiguity" that Russ often speaks of in street photography. To me, it's the questions and multiple possibilities that make the image riveting.
Nice work, Russ!
I understand where you are coming from with that idea, Eric, but isn't it sort of self-defeating? If a photograph doesn't actually say anything of its own, and all you can do is wonder, then surely, a large ? would suffice? Photoshop could do that so well without a camera.
I think pictures need a bit more than lack of subject. Of course, if lack of subject is actually subject, as in an extreme example of less being more, we may all just as well retire now and take up knitting. At least we'd have something tangible at the end of it, even if just a scarf.
;-)
Rob C
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I understand where you are coming from with that idea, Eric, but isn't it sort of self-defeating? If a photograph doesn't actually say anything of its own, and all you can do is wonder, then surely, a large ? would suffice? Photoshop could do that so well without a camera.
I think pictures need a bit more than lack of subject. Of course, if lack of subject is actually subject, as in an extreme example of less being more, we may all just as well retire now and take up knitting. At least we'd have something tangible at the end of it, even if just a scarf.
;-)
Rob C
Totally undifferentiated "wonder" isn't what I'm looking for, Rob. But photos that tell me everything I might want to know about the subject get pretty boring pretty quickly, IMHO. So, the kind of ambiguous photo that I like is one that suggests at least some boundaries on the viewer's speculation, but still leaves room for the viewer to exercise some imagination.
Eric
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I had to look a couple of times at the photo and think a couple of times before writing this up:
This is a strong photo and I don't like it.
Its strong, because it causes this sense of loss, departure, emptiness and maybe even a sort of mourning in a convincing simple way.
Thats why I don't like it - I don't want to feel like that. I don't want to feel left behind after the train has departed.
Well done, Russ !
Cheers
~Chris
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Totally undifferentiated "wonder" isn't what I'm looking for, Rob. But photos that tell me everything I might want to know about the subject get pretty boring pretty quickly, IMHO. So, the kind of ambiguous photo that I like is one that suggests at least some boundaries on the viewer's speculation, but still leaves room for the viewer to exercise some imagination.
Eric
And IMHO too, but is that really where we are both standing?
The reality, through my eyes only, of course (and how 007 is that!) is that we can all expect far too much from photographs, when they are totally incapable of delivering what we, the viewers, determine that they must. Photographs are not magical; at best they are can be beautiful and offer some satisfaction by provoking nice thoughts or, alternatively, pot ugly and provoke a sense of distaste, which is where the strength in much negative reporting can be found and works well. Photograph a riot and you can make it say pretty much what you want it to say; photograph a landscape and it says what the weather was like, where you were and possibly with whom.
I enclose another delightful little quotation from a chat between Eddie Adams and Robert Farber:
RF. "Which assignments made you happy? More than others".
EA. "Basically, other than that, as long as people are involved see because you have to remember they have architectural photography, but I think the pìcture of a beautiful building but... somebody made that building. That's the person who created the picture, not the photographer, the person who made that building. And then you have the light from the Sun... God created that light, not the photographer, but the photographer went there and just took a snap of it, and all of a sudden he's an architectural photographer."
There's another delight, which I can't find again, where David Bailey is responding to someone who spoke to him about 'art photography' and was questioning his (Bailey's) objection to the terminology. Bailey responds to the effect that you don't talk about art sculpture or art painting, so why treat photography differently...
So you see, perhaps I'm not the best chap with whom to have these 'artistic' chats - I tend to regard them with deep suspicion and not a little skepticism. After you've made a few thousand pictures and been paid to do it, you come to the conclusion that at best you are competent, have an eye for it, and that's pretty much all there is to the thing. The only people I see making fantastical claims for photography are those who have never actually made much out of it. For those who have, both in the professional life as well as the others who have simply been able to latch onto the art market, the truth is that with time, they both prefer agents to do the selling for them because the agent can sell the bullshit where the photographer reaps only embarrassment at the nonsense he has to purvey.
It's a tough life at both ends of the spectrum.
Rob C
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It could be argued that a photograph that makes us feel anything beyond indifference is worthwhile, even if it elicits a sense of loss, an appreciation of beauty, or interest in a particular subject or product. Just my $0.02.
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Right, David, and it's what I keep calling a transcendental experience, a feeling you can only feel, but not put into words. Terry, Mike, Stamper, Graeme, Tony, Eric and Chris evidently got that kind of experience from this picture. I got it too, that's why I stopped, backed up about five paces and made the shot. I gather that since there are no boobs in the picture, Rob didn't get that kind of experience.
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Right, David, and it's what I keep calling a transcendental experience, a feeling you can only feel, but not put into words. Terry, Mike, Stamper, Graeme, Tony, Eric and Chris evidently got that kind of experience from this picture. I got it too, that's why I stopped, backed up about five paces and made the shot. I gather that since there are no boobs in the picture, Rob didn't get that kind of experience.
Close, but about a foot-and-a-bit off: my reality is that I really do prefer looking at a beautiful face; boobs are more for childhood or the dark.
Actually, and human physique apart, the problem, as I see it, isn't in any way confined to your image where I do, of course, understand what you may have been trying to portray. But that's partly the trouble: you may have been trying to do that, but the required viewer reaction is a reflex, derived from thousands of similar images in the genre, each reinforcing the other until there is no longer anything really new being said - just repetition of the same old song. That's what happens in fashion photography as much as in pinups. These are all genre efforts and, as such, eventually become invisible. Exactly as the supposed motif in your tracks.
That's why so many well-known photographers tend to become somewhat coy and unassuming in talking about what they do: they understand it all too well and realise that photography is not magic, is almost never art and most frequently is an exercise in being able to say "Oh, look, it turned out!" and of course it did, that's what let them be professionals.
The sooner we come to realise that, then the sooner I think most willl come be happy in their relationship with themselves and, financially importantly (for those to whom it counts) it will see the end of the quest for the next best bit of plastic and glass. It never makes you a better snapper - you just have more to play with, and as every child eventually knows, you can only play with one toy at a time if you really want to discover its potential. If it has one at all.
The problem isn't really any specific photographer, it's the medium. To amplify on Donovan: remove the imperative and there is no valid purpose.
Rob C
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But! At great personal risk, I'd like to share my thoughts about this, but not trying to pontificate. Photography is a medium (maybe a currency?) like everything else we use to try and connect with one another. Words, paintings, sculpture, theater, science, etc (some of these are mixed media no?) are forms of expression and organization that we use to communicate subjective and necessarily approximate realities. We say we have heard that song before about unrequited love and tragedy (Tristan and Isolde, Hero and Leander, almost any country western song, etc), but each re-telling of the "cliche" can be appreciated for variations on a common theme that we all have had or will experience, for the richness of the embellishment by the story teller, for the sheer size of a tapestry depicting the events re-told, or for the technical execution of the attempt to communicate even what is an old, old story. Revealing my childish ;) preoccupation at times, I love boobs; all the time, every way, size, shape, real or "fake" it doesn't matter. My 89 yo father still loves boobs, too! Sure, I would love the Platonic ideal, but I sure like going through the data to find the most perfect approximation ;) or should I say approximations :P Media can be used to create everything from the profound, to the mundane, to the vulgar, but I would argue that to be successful, they must in some sense represent a "cliche" a cliche to someone, somewhere. A cliche to one skilled in the art, may not be a cliche to a neophyte. But this does not negate the fact that a rendition is appreciated or found irritating and overused, precisely because it communicates something of our common experience; beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
When I saw Russ' photo graph, I could appreciate it for it's technical excellence (composition, exposure, post processing, etc). I could also appreciate it aesthetically, feel the sense of emptiness that exists in a million different venues and within all of us. But what I loved most of all were the empty tracks, which to me signify the inevitability of loneliness and I found Russ' rendition beautiful and terrible, at the same time. I keep hearing Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" in the background as I write this, which is probably mixing metaphors ;), but I also love the renditions by Rosanne Cash and every other artist that sings this song even though I've heard it a million times (that' hyperbole) ;)
Just because Shakespeare writes another story about a mad king or a cuckolded husband, doesn't mean we don't appreciate, enjoy, even revere how he uses common (vulgar?) words to tell the tale. Now, I'm no Shakespeare with a camera, but I sure enjoy all of the renditions here in LuLa land, some successful, some not. I enjoy the repartee and thought provoking discussions here in LuLa, and while I have yet to produce my "masterpiece" I also love the gathering of kindred souls around a warm fire on a cold evening, even if we are re-telling "old stories."
Probably way off point and did not mean to be pedantic, but also wanted to share what you all elicited in me. Thanks, and all the best!
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Very beautifully expressed, David!
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Thanks David, and I certainly agree with Eric. Very well said.
I might add that to a large degree response to any art is learned. Sometimes something in an unfamiliar genre can knock your socks off at first sight or at first hearing, but that kind of thing is very rare. The more you study an art form the more its subtleties reveal themselves, and the more you perceive those subtleties the more you can appreciate what's there.
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The more you study an art form the more its subtleties reveal themselves, and the more you perceive those subtleties the more you can appreciate what's there.
Si. Which is why I am having so much fun here in LuLa!
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Si. Which is why I am having so much fun here in LuLa!
The reason I like photographs of faces more than of boobs:
https://www.google.es/search?q=hans+feurer&tbm=isch&imgil=Fc_zEWVNc3rx6M%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcTK6jZcRbUqvQvTXdrR0qxiaomFaXZf-Daw45sXuTygYjtkq0qF%253B744%253B496%253BFn8xrvMYW7KOeM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.benjaminkanarekblog.com%25252F2011%25252F04%25252F16%25252Femmanuelle-alt-hans-feurer-vogue-paris%25252F&source=iu&usg=__1Ddr_ZhcMsnmBxCdUCYgUODRmF8%3D&sa=X&ei=VFUOU8KIBsOSywOww4K4AQ&sqi=2&ved=0CC8Q9QEwAA&biw=1257&bih=886#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=hDWKvnOJa4IXgM%253A%3BWGmuj-9zzDPUpM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F1.bp.blogspot.com%252F-OFf__64ggb8%252FUdLQbwMbhrI%252FAAAAAAAAiYE%252FueILku2zL3A%252Fs1361%252Fmode3_newslicious_hans_feurer_antidote.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmode.newslicious.net%252F2013%252F07%252Fstreet-style-catherine-frida-zuzanna.html%3B1361%3B908
Rob C
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Rob, like you, I am a lover of the female form! Thanks for the link.
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I never could understand why Garry Winogrand's book, Women Are Beautiful got slammed. Women ARE beautiful, even when they're caught in what they consider to be unattractive poses. Even when they're not models or ballerinas. Even when they're old. Women just simply are beautiful.
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Totally undifferentiated "wonder" isn't what I'm looking for, Rob. But photos that tell me everything I might want to know about the subject get pretty boring pretty quickly, IMHO. So, the kind of ambiguous photo that I like is one that suggests at least some boundaries on the viewer's speculation, but still leaves room for the viewer to exercise some imagination.
Eric
+1
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I never could understand why Garry Winogrand's book, Women Are Beautiful got slammed. Women ARE beautiful, even when they're caught in what they consider to be unattractive poses. Even when they're not models or ballerinas. Even when they're old. Women just simply are beautiful.
Wow, Russ, that's one sweeping statement! Or you live a charmed life.
I've come across beauties with scarred personalities; beauties that drive you insane with mindless chatter within fifteen minutes and you mentally pray for a taxi home alone; I've met ugly ones who are as ugly inside as out; ugly ones that are beautiful within and some that have a little bit of all the above rolled into one. I'd suggest that there are almost (but not quite) as many unpleasant and boring women out there as there are men, with one saving grace: none I have met has talked about sports, unless she was still a child for whom it was a continuing part of school life.
On the whole, though, I'd rather sit at a pavement table and have a coffee with a bunch of birds than with a bunch of men. Men are so predictable in their conversation - when they have one. Or maybe it's just the ones I meet. Of either gender.
;-)
Rob C
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I can't argue with any of that, Rob. But I was looking at your web site and I got carried away.
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I never could understand why Garry Winogrand's book, Women Are Beautiful got slammed. Women ARE beautiful, even when they're caught in what they consider to be unattractive poses. Even when they're not models or ballerinas. Even when they're old. Women just simply are beautiful.
+1
I can't argue with any of that, Rob. But I was looking at your web site and I got carried away.
+1
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I can't argue with any of that, Rob. But I was looking at your web site and I got carried away.
It's these damned guys in white coats again, Russ; they spoil everything in the end! Couldn't you just tell them you felt an obligation to run my viewing numbers a bit higher and were only trying to help? I'm sure they'd have understood the good motivation...
;-)
Rob C
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Interesting image indeed, a great starting point for a discussion.
Without elaborating further on the said/unsaid that is fascinating in its own right, there is ony aspect I find particularly interesting, it is the position of the 2 rails within the image relative to its edges.
I believe that the near coincidence between the right rail and the bottom corner of the image is by far the single most important compositional aspect of the image.
I am not sure I like it from an aesthetical standpoint to be frank, but leaving that aside, how do you guys feel about the message conveyed by this concidence as opposed to other options where the 2 rails would have been fully within the image, or the right one passing outside the image to its right (the photographer being somewhere between the 2 rails)?
Cheers,
Bernard
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Interesting image indeed, a great starting point for a discussion.
Without elaborating further on the said/unsaid that is fascinating in its own right, there is ony aspect I find particularly interesting, it is the position of the 2 rails within the image relative to its edges.
I believe that the near coincidence between the right rail and the bottom corner of the image is by far the single most important compositional aspect of the image.
I am not sure I like it from an aesthetical standpoint to be frank, but leaving that aside, how do you guys feel about the message conveyed by this concidence as opposed to other options where the 2 rails would have been fully within the image, or the right one passing outside the image to its right (the photographer being somewhere between the 2 rails)?
Cheers,
Bernard
Interesting.
I half-consciously recognized it, but didn't include it in my thoughts.
Now that you mention it, I for me it increases the uneasy feeling and the discomfort because of the ambiguity (Russ? !!!) of the position of the right track.
Its neither clearly on the bottom of the frame, nor in the corner, nor on the right side and because its position is not clearly defined, it's sort of floating in between something.
I think this of opens the frame of the image here, like hole drilled in by that track and therefore extending the image into the space of the viewer, which makes it compelling.
Also the left track is pointing towards the viewer, like this famous American Uncle Sam thing ("We want you!") which increases the effect of the image grabbing us.
Not sure if I really nailed it with that analysis, but that's how I feel and think about it.
Cheers
~Chris
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Interesting image indeed, a great starting point for a discussion.
Without elaborating further on the said/unsaid that is fascinating in its own right, there is ony aspect I find particularly interesting, it is the position of the 2 rails within the image relative to its edges.
I believe that the near coincidence between the right rail and the bottom corner of the image is by far the single most important compositional aspect of the image.
I am not sure I like it from an aesthetical standpoint to be frank, but leaving that aside, how do you guys feel about the message conveyed by this concidence as opposed to other options where the 2 rails would have been fully within the image, or the right one passing outside the image to its right (the photographer being somewhere between the 2 rails)?
Cheers,
Bernard
This is critique or this is reconstruction?
Whatever, it underlines, points out or illustrates - call it as you might - the problem with the concept of asking for other people's opinions on posted images. Imagine if God had given this forum the chance to redesign the planet: walking or driving would have been rendered impossible by those cussed concrete tripod holes distributed everywhere.
On the bright side, we might all have been given free, light-weight carbon fibre Gitzos at reaching the age of twenty-one. Then we could hold our heads high in peer company!
;-)
Rob C
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Hi everyone, I decided to blog about this discussion thread (shameless self promotion) ;), but thought some might be interested. It can be found on my blog site, which you can reach by clicking on this link: Why take a photograph? (http://davideckelsphotography.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-take-photograph.html) Comments are always welcome, here or there :)
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This is one of those intriguing images English teachers would use to stimulate creative writing. There must be a thousand stories down those tracks! A very appealing image!
I'd write about my holidays in Porto Civitanova when I was a little boy ('50s), perhaps because there was a railway near our house and mediterranean plants.