Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Andres Bonilla on October 26, 2007, 03:03:21 pm
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(http://www.pbase.com/abonilla/image/87898375/original.jpg)
I saw this lady on a side street of Bogota and I thought she would make a nice painting out of my photograph. What do you think?
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Not to be negative but it doesn't do much for me. As for the pondering part, on first impression, to me, it looks like a grandmother sitting watching her grandson/granddaughter playing baseball/soccer etc.
As for making paintings out of photographs, I've rarely seen any that impress me. They just look like pictures photoshopped to hell.
In all, not a very strong image, in my humble opinion.
I'm sure others may like it though.
Michael
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Michael
Michael your opinion is well taken but it leaves me with the impression that this is definitively NOT the type of work you like. The basis of your critique starts with a disdain for digital paintings than in your view are nothing more than Photoshop gimmicks. The lady was a humble street vendor but I guess that did not come thru in the piece. I guess she could be viewed as a soccer grandma?
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Andres -
Forgive me if I misunderstood what you wrote, but I get the impression that you are not at all happy about Michael´s lack of liking for your picture. Well, if you insist in posting on a photgraphic site, then you have to be able to accept the views that others have.
For my part, I have no respect for that sort of photographic oeuvre either - it is neither hare nor hound. It took me ages to get into a frame of mind where I could think of digital photography without a metaphorical sneer coming unbid to my lip. It started with picture libraries, where images appeared of people windsurfing over huge waterfalls, something which is so obviously impossible that it offends me in some way I can´t quite figure out. Visual lying, perhaps.
Now, that´s not to say I don´t respect very clever use of digital work in movies etc. (Matrix?). But for still pics - not really. Even cosmetic and fashion photography seems to have gone that one degree beyond the very fine line between convincing and just becoming a joke. Of course the world of fashion is illusion; the trick, though, is surely that the viewer/potential purchaser should not feel too patronised.
Your pic doesn´t fall into that category, of course, but where would you yourself think it fits? It´s very easy to knock pigeonholes, but life tends to be more free of stress that way!
Notwithstanding my own aversion to early digital, I have embraced it these last few years as a huge step forward. Perhaps it does, to some extent, put photography into the hands of the masses with predictable consequences, but then, so did the Box Brownie, something which did not stop stars from being born - I almost said created, but that could be a touch cruel. However, I might be pigeonholed myself as a traditionalist, but I think digital offers more than enough scope for honest work which does, at the end of the day, have an identity as a photographic work.
So, no, not my cup of tea at all, but that´s just my mind and the world is full of many others!
Ciao - Rob C
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(http://www.pbase.com/abonilla/image/87898375/original.jpg)
I saw this lady on a side street of Bogota and I thought she would make a nice painting out of my photograph. What do you think?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=148879\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Hi Andres,
Very interesting use of textures.
I think the flesh tones of the face are too much like the background in color (too similarly colored), (the color in the hands are more like it), so I'd play around with the design by trying different variations in the skin tones. Think subtle, but you will find something that works better.
She is floating. You need to ground her. There isn't anything to anchor her (except a very subtle background graduation of tone that doesn't do it. She needs at least a bit of shadow on the ground. That would also make her look more three dimensional. Patterns tend to have the effect of flattening out 3D sculptural forms which I think is happening also. It's hard to tell what is going on with her feet, imo.
Also the strong use of the outline as graphic enhancement is very much out of advertising, and it has an effect on the tone (as in gimmicky versus inspired). Personally I'd reduce the contrast of it.
IMHO, as far as real (old time film) photography or digital, or photoshop manipulations. It's the same as it ever was. Namely, you cannot expect to please everyone. Sometimes pleasing yourself alone is the ticket (as in let's say Vincent Van Gogh).
I hope these comments help you tweak your original vision.
So long for now, TOM
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Michael
The lady was a humble street vendor but I guess that did not come thru in the piece. I guess she could be viewed as a soccer grandma?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149113\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Andres: First of all, your expectation that your back-story/narrative will be the same for a given viewer is unrealistic
As far as Photoshop "paintings" go, there is a general misunderstanding among those who may neither have actually painted nor trained in art as to the level of decision making that is required to be successful. Dialing in Photoshop filters, etc. yields a lot of automatic effects and artifacts that are not intentionally executed by the maker. If these are left in the "finished" work, it seriously dilutes the expectation that the whole work and its complex inter-relationships has been consciously executed. However, given the various publics, you can probably sell this work at the average crafts fair.
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I would like to thank you for taking the time to express your opinion about my post. You have dissected what I have been observing for a while in the photographic community. That is the metaphorical sneer about different approaches to what some consider a pristine art form. I encountered this frame of mind recently at an art gallery in Palm Springs. The artist was a good landscape photographer but he had in his bio that his work was only God's light, no darkroom gimmicks and then he wrote in capital letters " Do not insult my intelligence asking me if this are digital photos !! " To him Photoshop was the antichrist and it was a tool to help mediocre photographers. I beg to differ since I had the opportunity to see Amsel Adams photographs at LACMA in L.A and they had the before and after originals. That is the photo straight out of the camera and the ones he worked on his darkroom. Two very different photos, yet at the little museum in Yosemite one critic once said the Adams was not a honest photographer and that his work was a visual lie.
Sounds familiar? Which brings me to your comment about Michael post, no Robert I have been posting photos and artwork in the net for a while and I know that some photos succeed while some others do not. You get the Good ( DandelionDigital) the bad ( Michael ) and the ugly ( Russell ) . My only comment about Michael's post was that he did not care for this type of approach period. I felt that this type of point of view hindered his objective perception of the image. I know that this a primordially a landscape forum but I was expecting more visual critique than- this type of work is dishonest, undefined and generally trash
Nevertheless I have enjoyed your post since it has pinpoint the attitudes to this type of work from some people. I appreciate your honesty as I respect Michael's.
Andres
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Sorry the previous post was for Robert
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Sorry the previous post was for Robert
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Yes, but it reminded me of the comment Edward Weston once made to the effect that he would print on a doormat if it gave him the effect he wanted.
I haven't commented on your portrait before this because I haven't been able to clarify my own reactions yet. I do find it intriguing, but something doesn't feel completely "right" to me yet. Is it the background color? Perhaps partly. Is it the sense of "floating"? Maybe, be that may also be a strength.
To me it "works" in the sense that I keep coming back to it, trying to figure out just how to "read" it. The fact that I don't want to dismiss it out of hand says that it has its own kind of strength.
Do keep trying.
Eric
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I´ve mainly resisted replying to posts where comment is actually requested; perhaps I should have stayed in that mode. But anyway, genie is out of bottle, so let´s go.
First, I don´t think that somebody saying they don´t like something should be taken so seriously; secondly, why should anyone be expected to react with greater enthusiasm and offer comment other than that which they feel? Personally, the shot you posted IS representative of something for which I feel a great emptiness - not of longing, just of nothing. There is no other "visual" form of criticism I can offer you - I just don´t enjoy that sort of thing. I do believe it might have use as a form of caricature - something for newspaper cartoonists to experiment with, perhaps - as art it leaves me disinterested.
This is called the LuLa right enough, but I certainly have no great interest in landscape photography. I dial into this site because I enjoy some of the posters a great deal; I think there is a great amount of tech information available here which, to somebody living in the middle of the Med is not that easily accessed in other, direct and personal ways; best of all, nobody is really trying to sell me anything, neither product not attitude. That´s rare and I like it.
My personal love and past pro experience is/was all about fashion and calendar photography and design. So really, whether or not this is LuLa does not impinge, as a factor, upon the sort of criticism offered when so requested. I don´t think that my professional life would have suited me to the salon type of photographic establishment either, so you´re a little adrift there if equating my mindset with some archetypal club-circuit ethic.
Sorry if you expected praise, but where I don´t see call for it I remain free of duplicity.
Ciao - Rob C
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I felt that this type of point of view hindered his objective perception of the image.
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There's no such thing as an "objective perception"!
We can talk about maximum resolution, sharpness, colour fidelity: those are (or can be) objective. But perception isn't - it's about impression, emotion, the subjective response to an image.
Criticism of the image can then be detailed and sympathetic, or it can be dismissive. Some forms are more helpful to the proposer than others, and maybe (only maybe) an out-of-hand aversion to a particular form isn't worth expressing when comments are sought.
For my part, I found speculating about the technique used to produce it more interesting than the final image. As one of my old teachers used to say, "the feasibility of an operation is no indication for its performance".
Jeremy
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Andres, I can't quite put my finger on why - but this image doesn't do anything for me. I really liked your previous processing of "Giggles" but this one just leaves me with a ho-hum feeling. I agree with other comments about her being suspended in space - something just doesn't feel quite right. I think the dark line around her is also too strong.
Julie
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Hello Tom! Yes, I think the floating aspect of the picture has bothered a few photographers, they all seem to focus on that aspect and also on the fact that the outline of the lady is too strong, too comic book to go with the rest of the natural media look. Actually the outline has a pastel texture to it but the jpg compression reduced it to a strong black line. Obviously people comment on what they see and perhaps I should have tweaked the web version a bit. I thought of a shadow but I was not sure how it would play with no floor.
I really appreciate your input which is the type of feedback I was expecting. You pointed out several things that did not work with this post and I am using that for this piece and future ones.
Thanks,
Andres
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Eric thanks for your comment, yes this is perhaps the most ambiguous, unclear post I have ever done. Some people like it a lot ( Digital painting forums of course ) others are intrigued by it and others downright hate it! Even at the painters forums I got the same feeling from them, too much similarity in the tonality and the floating aspect of the lady.
I had the same "missing" feeling about the work, which is why I posted it here, there are lots of great photographers or at least very visual people that I hoped would help me pinpoint some of the weaknesses of the piece.I did not mentioned since I wanted a fresh output from the viewers.
Thank you very much again,
Andres
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Jeremy
Hola Jeremy! Yes, we all have some type of prejudice toward things one way of another; specially in art where the first reaction is usually visceral. But as photographers or designers or visual people sometimes an open mind is not all that bad. In my work I had the opportunity to meet a very influential film critic, his out of hand aversion was fantasy or science fiction films. His thing was Truffaut, Vittorio de Sica etc. He said to me that from the first frame he knew he was going to hate Pan's Labyrinth, he could not believed that with the all the human richness the civil Spanish war has to offer, the director has opted for a darn fantasy fable!!! I could not point out to him the cinematography, the art design or nothing because the man just simply hated that type of film.
So maybe not objective perception but perhaps less rigid or speculative as my honesty as a photographer-painter.
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Andres, I can't quite put my finger on why - but this image doesn't do anything for me. I really liked your previous processing of "Giggles" but this one just leaves me with a ho-hum feeling. I agree with other comments about her being suspended in space - something just doesn't feel quite right. I think the dark line around her is also too strong.
Julie
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Thanks Jule, this one seems to have that I don't know feeling; this is why I post images on different forums, you get a average of what works and what does not. You got to filter some of the posts but in general it is very helpful.
Thanks so much.
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Russell two things: One, 90% of the work was done in Painter out of a photograph with a Wacom Tablet, no dialing automatic effects or canned actions from the Net. Right or wrong what I posted is what I intended. It may not work for you but you are wrong in your speculation of how this piece came about. Second, I wish my artwork could be shown at and Art Fair like Pageant of the Masters or Sawdust, in fact I bought a beautiful mask at an " average crafts fair " from a French artist and after visiting his website I found out that his mask are also own by Harry Belafonte, Harvey Keitel and many others including the curator of a modern art gallery. I guess the assumption that only "untrained" average artists go there is also a little bit off field.
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Russell two things: One, 90% of the work was done in Painter out of a photograph with a Wacom Tablet, no dialing automatic effects or canned actions from the Net. Right or wrong what I posted is what I intended. It may not work for you but you are wrong in your speculation of how this piece came about. Second, I wish my artwork could be shown at and Art Fair like Pageant of the Masters or Sawdust, in fact I bought a beautiful mask at an " average crafts fair " from a French artist and after visiting his website I found out that his mask are also own by Harry Belafonte, Harvey Keitel and many others including the curator of a modern art gallery. I guess the assumption that only "untrained" average artists go there is also a little bit off field.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149490\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Fair enough on your methods and my comment regarding art fairs was unnecessarily snide. I wouldn't have made some of your choices, such as the strongly continuous "buzzy" line around the figure's jacket, hat, and head, which I took then to be a selection/isolation artifact.
One thing I am wondering. It's often problematic when printing simulated texture such that appears in the background of your image, in that the actual flatness of inkjet rendering can introduce a false note. Some color/paper combinations seem more successful when presented with this situation than others. How do you handle this in your printing, or do you see it as a problem? Russ
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Hi Russ, yes the actual printing is usually a challenge, I can only print 13x19 inches, I have had good results with canvas because it allows me to go back and highlight with real paints the print. I got a couple of labs in L.A where they advise me to the different types of watercolor paper. When inkjet printing was done mainly with IRIS printers it was more complicated for me. Now lots of people use the big format Epson printers and is easier to predict the outcome. Several well known artist do inkjet prints or Giglees ( The fancier term ) and then they use "enhancements" or " Highlighting" where they go back and use real oils to give texture to their work. The real successful ones use other artists to do this. I have been told that if the giglee is retouched by the artist himself it costs more money. The late Earl Wind used serigraph and his galleries still do only that process, or so I was told in Carmel. James Coleman used Cibachrome but I think he is finally using giglees.
Andres
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Hi Russ, yes the actual printing is usually a challenge, I can only print 13x19 inches, I have had good results with canvas because it allows me to go back and highlight with real paints the print. I got a couple of labs in L.A where they advise me to the different types of watercolor paper. When inkjet printing was done mainly with IRIS printers it was more complicated for me. Now lots of people use the big format Epson printers and is easier to predict the outcome. Several well known artist do inkjet prints or Giglees ( The fancier term ) and then they use "enhancements" or " Highlighting" where they go back and use real oils to give texture to their work. The real successful ones use other artists to do this. I have been told that if the giglee is retouched by the artist himself it costs more money. The late Earl Wind used serigraph and his galleries still do only that process, or so I was told in Carmel. James Coleman used Cibachrome but I think he is finally using giglees.
Andres
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Andres - Giclée is nothing more than a fancy bit of French terminology for spray; it applies to all inkjet printers. It is also now somewhat outmoded as an art-enhancing description used in the recent past by galleristas to add value to a common or garden, non-silver, machine-printed picture.
Your scepticism of the art world - if I read you correctly - is possibly the healthiest attitude to have!
Ciao - Rob C
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Andres - Giclée is nothing more than a fancy bit of French terminology for spray; it applies to all inkjet printers. It is also now somewhat outmoded as an art-enhancing description used in the recent past by galleristas to add value to a common or garden, non-silver, machine-printed picture.
Your scepticism of the art world - if I read you correctly - is possibly the healthiest attitude to have!
Ciao - Rob C
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Well, in a positive note, IRIS prints were really expensive and I was told labor intensive. Home printing was equated with fuzzy prints made out of 2 megabytes digital photos. Nowadays, I have been pleasantly surprised with inkjet prints made by photographers in their home Epson printers.
Well, last year I talked to a photographer in downtown L.A who told me inkjet prints were just ink!! He told me than on his view the traditional darkroom could never be surpassed by ink machines. Also the curator in Carmel said that Serigraphy was a proven method while inkjet prints were a dreadful convenience.
So there is still some debate going on out there.
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Well, in a positive note, IRIS prints were really expensive and I was told labor intensive. Home printing was equated with fuzzy prints made out of 2 megabytes digital photos. Nowadays, I have been pleasantly surprised with inkjet prints made by photographers in their home Epson printers.
Well, last year I talked to a photographer in downtown L.A who told me inkjet prints were just ink!! He told me than on his view the traditional darkroom could never be surpassed by ink machines. Also the curator in Carmel said that Serigraphy was a proven method while inkjet prints were a dreadful convenience.
So there is still some debate going on out there.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=149956\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
"There is still some debate going on out there."
Yes, and I think that it will continue for quite some time to come. Much of the debate, in my opinion, stems from the simple fact that within the time-scale of the history of photography, silver had become the norm after a period of different attempts to set a standard process. So, with an established way of conducting business, any departure from that will cause a lot of ripples on the photographic pond. Digital has been not so much a ripple as a tidal wave.
As I recall, digital was originally though by Kodak et al to be something that would appeal to a small market; instead of that, it served to wipe out huge tranches of the photographic industry that created and sponsored it. It also helped some photographers retire less than gracefully, unable or unwilling to learn and pay for new technology.
Perhaps the greatest benefits have gone to the amateur market where new is sometimes thought of as better; where much of photographic life is consumed with endless speculation about specification; where it might not be so much a matter of what you do but of HOW you do it.
On the pro side, it has created an entirely different workflow, forced the spending of lots of money and caused a great deal more work to be required before the invoice can be handed over. There are those who see this as a good idea and those who do not. For myself, now that I´ve left the strictly commercial world of photography, I see a certain benefit in having more control of the steps - I get to play a little longer at creating something. But, were I still doing this for money, I would far rather spend the time doing fresh shoots than sitting before a computer wondering just how much it was all going to cost me in time and effort. There was something rather neat and final about handing over a set of good transparencies and letting the client worry about it after that.
Ciao - Rob C
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For myself, now that I´ve left the strictly commercial world of photography, I see a certain benefit in having more control of the steps - I get to play a little longer at creating something. But, were I still doing this for money, I would far rather spend the time doing fresh shoots than sitting before a computer wondering just how much it was all going to cost me in time and effort.
Ciao - Rob C
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I quite enjoy reading Ken Rockwell's site for his iconoclastic views. He makes just this point and says he rarely shoots raw - that even for commercial work he does the in-camera processing and the quality of the pictures he gets means jpegs are good enough. And if you shoot jpegs it removes a lot of the temptation to process to the nth degree.
This caused a right stink on other fora with purists who insist that the one true way is having the RAW file so they can 'get it perfect' however long that takes.
As an inveterate firtler I have a great deal of sympathy with that.
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I quite enjoy reading Ken Rockwell's site for his iconoclastic views. He makes just this point and says he rarely shoots raw - that even for commercial work he does the in-camera processing and the quality of the pictures he gets means jpegs are good enough. And if you shoot jpegs it removes a lot of the temptation to process to the nth degree.
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Using his logic and along with Ansel Adams' famous line........ " the negative is the score and the print is the symphony" it would seem that Mr Rockwell doesn't have many symphonies.
Michael
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Doesn't do anything for me - boring composition, no drama, and the effect looks like any other photoshop job.
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I saw some good photos from one fellow at a photographic forum, when asked why the Duatones,he seemed to panic and went on a tirade about it was only an experiment and that he seldom used Photoshop and when he did it was for very, very minor levels adjustment. Why the stigma? Didn't photographers use dodging and burning before in their traditional labs? Were all photos unretouched?
I am not talking about my effort here I am talking about photography in general, now it seems a few photographers are claiming a pristine art form before the digital era.
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Doesn't do anything for me - boring composition, no drama, and the effect looks like any other photoshop job.
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That is the purpose of this forum to see what works and what does not, some times you have a beautiful landscape that people love, sometimes you have a boring photo of a tree that you like for some reason but the viewers hate.
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That is the purpose of this forum to see what works and what does not, some times you have a beautiful landscape that people love, sometimes you have a boring photo of a tree that you like for some reason but the viewers hate.
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Andres, that´s not quite the same argument at all! The remark is aimed at the obvious use of PS, not at subject matter per se.
Rob C
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Andres, that´s not quite the same argument at all! The remark is aimed at the obvious use of PS, not at subject matter per se.
Rob C
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Rob, what I was trying to say is that sometimes what you think works, being subject matter , post production, look of a photo may not work at all for some people. Is like music on a website, some poeple love it some others think is cheesy. I t is the same argument, sometimes is a matter of taste, sometimes the artwork fails.
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Using his logic and along with Ansel Adams' famous line........ " the negative is the score and the print is the symphony" it would seem that Mr Rockwell doesn't have many symphonies.
Michael
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I can fully see where you are coming from, but the quality of the 'symphony' is purely down to the judgement of the buying client, not how it was arrived at.
The only arbiter of the quality of his, and any professional's, work is the client - and if they don't realise (or don't care) he is using jpegs not RAW, then who are we to say he is wrong?
So if you can spend less time sat at a computer, spend more time out taking pictures, and still make a good living - which would you rather do?
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I can fully see where you are coming from, but the quality of the 'symphony' is purely down to the judgement of the buying client, not how it was arrived at.
The only arbiter of the quality of his, and any professional's, work is the client - and if they don't realise (or don't care) he is using jpegs not RAW, then who are we to say he is wrong?
So if you can spend less time sat at a computer, spend more time out taking pictures, and still make a good living - which would you rather do?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=151247\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Spend less time at the computer, less time at the camera (hardly possible, I admit!) and much more time paying in the cheques!
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I can fully see where you are coming from, but the quality of the 'symphony' is purely down to the judgement of the buying client, not how it was arrived at.
The only arbiter of the quality of his, and any professional's, work is the client - and if they don't realise (or don't care) he is using jpegs not RAW, then who are we to say he is wrong?
So if you can spend less time sat at a computer, spend more time out taking pictures, and still make a good living - which would you rather do?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=151247\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I disagree, the quality of the symphony is down to MY judgement.
Personally I think that most photographs, to reach the photographers vision (God I hate that word), need darkroom work, whether that's traditional or digital.
Also a lot of photographers aren't doing commercial work for an art director/client. I'm a portrait photographer, so jpegs aren't good enough period. Other photographers do scenics, so "good enough", is a reflection of their committment and I doubt that jpegs work in that regard.
As for the " what would rather be doing... working at a computer or shooting? the answer is both. Working at the computer is the necessary completion of the job of shooting. It can be done anytime when shooting is not an option. I fail to see the either/or of the question. The answer is both. One I enjoy, and the other is necessary to complete the symphony, as it were.
Michael