Thanks Tim for this opportunity to comment on your photographs.
No, thank YOU for taking the time to critique my work
I would give consideration to putting some of the more clearly identifiable images of a church at the beginning of the portfolio - to set the scene. I purposely did not read the introduction before I viewed the images, and there were about half a dozen images at the beginning that could have been of any abandoned building. A stronger statement pictorially at the beginning that it was an church may support your theme better.
Good point. I need to go back and get some of the outside and surrounding area.
Is there any way that you could include an unobtrusive title or number identification for each image on your website? If you were wanting feedback from a client or gallery it is very difficult to describe which images they are interested in - other than "...the one with the windows and the glass broken....etc"
I'm glad you mentioned this, as naming/titling my work is one of those areas I find extremely difficult. I feel sometimes as though the moment you name something it somehow defines it, simplifies it, puts it in a wrapper we can understand. There is good and bad to naming I suppose, but the point about a potential buyer being able to describe a certain image makes sense.
I don't think the pairs work at all. Interesting that you yourself mentioned the word 'monotony' - of one page one image. Perhaps you sensed the monotony of some of your images because they lacked that 'x' factor. I would go through and cull about half of your images, set the scene by putting clearly identifiable ones of a church at the beginning, and return and take some more images including the 'life' which now inhabits the church, and intersperse these new images with the best of your existing gallery.
I agree, the pairs don't work. I was not actually "pairing" the images as much as I was trying to break up not the monotony of the work itself (I don't think the work is boring) but rather the page layout. I find this click, click, click one image at a time not only consuming but tedious no matter whose work I am looking at on the web--it's the nature of this technological beast.
I'll have to make it back there at some point. I guess I don't follow much of the references to documentary photography as I don't see myself as one. I'm not trying to draw attention to starving children in Somalia, or capture the seasonal bird migrations in Alaska. I am simply capturing a time and place and trying as best I can to put the viewer in my place so they can see what I saw at the time. Is that documentary? I don't know.
All I know is I don't consciously go into a building, or to a part of the country, with a preset notion of what I am going to accomplish. My work uses natural light, all of it, even the commercial stuff I've done. Much of what I shoot I can't plan for the weather or know the conditions of my
environment. I enjoy the surprise of finding myself in the right place at the right time with the right light too much I suppose.
In any event, thanks to all who have responded. I think I have collected some quality feedback and will continue to polish my work. Maybe after a few trips to this place I'll come to have a deeper understanding of what it is I am truly trying to capture.
Thanks!
Tim