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Author Topic: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber  (Read 15624 times)

Ray

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #20 on: June 28, 2014, 07:59:44 am »

Kevin in future if you decide to post images then you should ask Ray if he's happy with your subjects and only post what he thinks are "appropriate". This post smacks of censorship and possibly elitism. When I first viewed them I was jealous of the fact that you had the opportunity to access this type of photography. Well done.  8)

Don't be silly, Stamper. I'm merely expressing my opinion of Kevin's shot, honestly and truthfully, and I try to give reasons for my opinion.

If you think the image is 'cool', fair enough. You're entitled to your opinion just as, I hope, that I am entitled to mine.
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #21 on: June 28, 2014, 08:04:26 am »

Hi,

My feeling is that the images are OK. Anyway, the owners of the site may publish any images they wish.

Regarding the design of the site, I can live with it. I have some respect that owners need to generate some income.

Best regards
Erik
I received two email overnight. One from someone who railed against our site design, calling it an abomination.

The other, from some who picked up an email discussion that ended 7 years ago. He then added, "What a dumbass. Why the hell do you even open your stupid mouth? People like you make me sick. You're ignorant and full of shit.

Clearly someone gone off their meds. 7 years, and then this!

I mention these for no other reason than to point out that summer holiday weekends seem to leave some people adrift, and the opportunity to rail against someone or something apparently brings some solace to them.

Me, I'm going for a swim before breakfast, and then will do my best to enjoy this lovely summer holiday weekend. Oh yes, and in the Zen manner, I will do my best to think kind thoughts about others.

Michael
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viewfinder

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #22 on: June 28, 2014, 09:44:57 am »

Interesting......

I always love Kevin's choice of subject and even like his composition, it's only the over processing that makes me avert my eyes.......

In the case of these latest water pumping images the colour balance and hue seem entirely wrong for subject to me.   I am frequently in a similar pumping station which is now a museum of power but has one of it's three giant steam engines still in place and working*.    The overall colouring and hue are essentially black/gray in both reality and atomosphere.....Far removed from Kevins pleasant and glowing gold browns.

It does seem to me that if one attemtps to record and do justice to such places from our industrial heritage that we should try for a truthful representation.   To make such places look like screens from computer games or glowingly nostalgic does 'sell them cheap'.....     At the very least the huge iron castings should, surely, look like metal and not like chocolate and treacle cake!

..........*The Museum of Power mentioned above is a former water pump station at Langford, between Maldon and Chelmsford in Essex, Southern England.    The museum is a fantastic place for photographers having one of the original giant Lilleshall engines (very similar to Kevin's pic) still in place and also a working machine shop from a London factory that features the exact belt driven machines all made circa 1914 and in fine condition, as well as a collection of British aero engines, and much more besides.  the museum is run by volunteers who are all enthusiasts and love their work to be well photographed.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2014, 09:55:43 am by viewfinder »
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #23 on: June 28, 2014, 10:41:42 am »

Personally, I was astonished that anyone could react as Ray did to Kevin's pictures (except, perhaps, for the degree of processing in some cases).

I have to say that I really love them!

They remind me very much of images I have taken recently at Boston's Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, which has at least three generations of magnificent water pumping stations, beautifully restored. Admission to the museum is free ($5 donation requested), and the volunteer guides are all very knowledgeable and helpful. And the museum not only permits photography, it encourages it, tripods and all!

For those of you who like Kevin and Michael's photos from the Buffalo Waterworks, consider visiting the Waterworks Museum the next time you are in Boston. Their website is http://waterworksmuseum.org. (Ray needn't bother.)

Here is one of mine is black and white. A few others in color and black and white are on my website.
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)

jjj

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #24 on: June 28, 2014, 10:53:08 am »

Of course. It's understood that people have different tastes. I'm under no delusion about that. Even identical twins can have different tastes.

What I find useful is trying to understand why one either likes, dislikes, or is indifferent to, a particular photo.
Well, you just answered your own question. Because we have different tastes.

Quote
So often we just get comments like 'Nice shot!' or 'Great shot!'. I think probably the main reason I find beauty in landscape photos in general, is because they depict a naturalness and harmony which is so lacking in modern cities and industrialized situations.

From that perspective, I find Heavy Metal the antithesis of what I would describe as beautiful.
You can post rationalise your taste as much as you want, but ultimately your reason for liking something or not is down to your taste. All you are doing with the rationalising is describing what your tastes are, not explaining why they are.
Contrary to you I think modern cities and industrialised situations can be indeed beautiful, because they appeal to my sense of aesthetic. Landscapes and nature can also be beautiful, just in different ways.
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jjj

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #25 on: June 28, 2014, 11:10:29 am »

Ray ...if you knew me you would know I don't fly into rages.  Actually I am very content happy and hardly ever angry.  I have been taking images all my life and enjoy trying to shoot and illustrate something out of my comfort zone which for the most part over the last 20 years is landscapes.  I hide nothing and my blog and galleries are out there for all to see and share.  To me heavy metal is all about this remarkable building we got to visit in Buffalo and how it made me feel.  The lighting, printing and such accomplishes what I wanted to covey.  Too bad you can't see the prints at my gallery.  
Indeed. If you are a photographer and get upset because someone doesn't like your work, you better not show it to anyone.
I used to have a separate B+W and a colour print portfolio and one day I showed them both to two magazine Art Editors their responses were along the lines of  "Your B+W white is great, but I don't like the colour work though" and Your colour work is amazing, why do you even bother with the B+W?" This simply amused me and underlined how very individual tastes are and why trying to please everyone is a fool's errand.

On the other hand I do not understand people who ask you what you think about something, then get annoyed when you tell them something that isn't effusive and sycophantic. Why not avoid the hassle/bad feeling and simply ask people to pretend that they like their creation or whatever instead. When asked I simply tell people it's not to my taste [which is the truth usually], rather than play the silly game of pretending to like something I don't.
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BradSmith

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #26 on: June 28, 2014, 03:02:54 pm »

I'm a retired civil engineer, so a large portion of my life was spent around large construction and "industrial" works.  But it wasn't till I was well into it that I began to appreciate, what to me, was the occasional beauty around me.  

Brad

« Last Edit: June 28, 2014, 03:05:02 pm by BradSmith »
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Tim J

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #27 on: June 28, 2014, 04:29:07 pm »

Kevin, I personally love your Water Works photos but more than that I love great pictures of all types. It's great when people have different opinions but when they voice it as some definitive universal truth it just shows how irrational people can be. When they take it even further and spout profanity and vulgarity than it just shows how sad certain individuals are.

Keep up the great work Kevin. I admire your positive attitude and your desire to explore new photographic possibilities.

-Tim
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Ray

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #28 on: June 28, 2014, 09:27:35 pm »

Personally, I was astonished that anyone could react as Ray did to Kevin's pictures (except, perhaps, for the degree of processing in some cases).

I am astonished that you are astonished, Eric.  ;)

So far, from the comments in this thread, I'm getting the impression that many of those who like Kevin's image, Heavy Metal, do so because they have some past, pleasant association with heavy, industrialized equipment, and have perhaps once worked, or continue to work, in a comfortable office in a water-works complex, nuclear reactor, or other environment with heavy machinery.

That's fair enough. I'm criticising the photo, not people's opinions of it. Photos usually bring to mind certain associations and feelings in the viewer. If a photo doesn't do that, then an appropriate comment might be, "It doesn't do anything for me. Can't see the point", or something like that.

We must all have witnessed the great significance that some people attach to what appears to be a very ordinary snapshot. The reason is because the snapshot invokes certain memories in the owner, which might not be depicted in the photo.

For me, the associations that Heavy Metal invoke are of a Dickensian, child slavery environment, an ear-damaging, constant clatter of machinery, and a drab, mind-numbing  decor.

However, I would concede that in the category of the Grotesque, Kevin's image does have some merit.

As regards your image, Eric, at least it does depict a rather pleasant, rainbow-like arch.  :)

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Kevin Raber

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #29 on: June 28, 2014, 09:50:38 pm »

Really Ray?

I'm moving on.  I suggest you do too.

I've got a lot more heavy metal things to photograph.

Kevin
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Kevin Raber
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Edward Starkie

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #30 on: June 29, 2014, 07:02:41 am »

No-one on this thread has yet mentioned what I find most interesting about this image--to me it tells a story about industry in America, the rise and eventual fall of industrial design based upon the coal age and the rise of American steel, and the ability and skills of American labor to fabricate, move and assemble gigantic works using rivers and trains and horses and sheer muscle and guts. The aesthetic of that design type is the same as the aesthetic of the Titanic, big and powerful and possible over-complicated with an incomplete understanding of the forces involved. When I look at the picture, I see all of those nuts and bolts and the thickness of the structural supports rising up on either side of the pressure tank. I see the ghosts of strong men laboring with winches in what was likely dangerous work to lever these monstrous pieces into place, others with gigantic wrenches painstakingly torquing each of the hundreds of bolts into place, men who probably took a streetcar to work or walked there and went home proud at the end of the day, able to point to a monumental work that was also vital for the public health.

I think that Kevin has caught the vitality of those workers efforts and the picture is a great testimony of an an era when it was thought necessary to build monumental things rather than efficient clever things, a rougher era that was a transition to our more technological time. What is shown in the picture could have been designed by a 17th century scientist, but the constituent industries necessary did not exist. But the concept of steam power and the industrial age came from that era. Now we are in a different era and the machinery appears primitive to our eyes, but the benefits of American industry based on that 17th century scientific concept of the world allowed America to prosper, to educate, to research and move into realms of production and manufacturing that would appear almost as magic to those of earlier times.

That is what that photo communicates to me. Thought provoking at the least, and to those old enough to know those who labored in the first half of the twentieth century, poignant. Well done, Kevin.
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viewfinder

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #31 on: June 29, 2014, 07:10:56 am »

.....Yes, but they did not labour in a golden glow, did they?
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michael

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #32 on: June 29, 2014, 08:40:27 am »

The great American physicist Richard Feynman was teaching a course in quantum chromodynamics. One of his students had the temerity to raise his hand and ask, "Dr Feynman... do you prefer the Copenhagen or the Many Worlds interpretation of what quantum physics means?"

Feynman's terse reply was, "It doesn't matter what it means – just shut up and calculate".

Point made?

Michael
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michael

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #33 on: June 29, 2014, 08:48:41 am »

".....Yes, but they did not labour in a golden glow, did they?"

Clearly you wen't there when the light through the glass ceiling cast an intense warm glow, that was witnessed by some 20 of us.


No, it's just easier to bring a snippy preconception to the situation rather than let the work speak for itself.

Michael
« Last Edit: June 29, 2014, 09:58:20 am by michael »
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dchew

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #34 on: June 29, 2014, 10:57:58 am »

There is a back story to this building... When they first brought in the equipment on a crane supported by the building structure, the building failed and 8 workers were killed. They had to re-design the structure, knock down the old one and start from scratch.

Dave



No-one on this thread has yet mentioned what I find most interesting about this image--to me it tells a story about industry in America, the rise and eventual fall of industrial design based upon the coal age and the rise of American steel, and the ability and skills of American labor to fabricate, move and assemble gigantic works using rivers and trains and horses and sheer muscle and guts. The aesthetic of that design type is the same as the aesthetic of the Titanic, big and powerful and possible over-complicated with an incomplete understanding of the forces involved. When I look at the picture, I see all of those nuts and bolts and the thickness of the structural supports rising up on either side of the pressure tank. I see the ghosts of strong men laboring with winches in what was likely dangerous work to lever these monstrous pieces into place, others with gigantic wrenches painstakingly torquing each of the hundreds of bolts into place, men who probably took a streetcar to work or walked there and went home proud at the end of the day, able to point to a monumental work that was also vital for the public health.

I think that Kevin has caught the vitality of those workers efforts and the picture is a great testimony of an an era when it was thought necessary to build monumental things rather than efficient clever things, a rougher era that was a transition to our more technological time. What is shown in the picture could have been designed by a 17th century scientist, but the constituent industries necessary did not exist. But the concept of steam power and the industrial age came from that era. Now we are in a different era and the machinery appears primitive to our eyes, but the benefits of American industry based on that 17th century scientific concept of the world allowed America to prosper, to educate, to research and move into realms of production and manufacturing that would appear almost as magic to those of earlier times.

That is what that photo communicates to me. Thought provoking at the least, and to those old enough to know those who labored in the first half of the twentieth century, poignant. Well done, Kevin.
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david loble

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #35 on: June 29, 2014, 11:41:14 am »

Hooray for Michael and Sharon!

They have brought some objectivity to this discussion. My attitude towards online criticism mirrors Sharon's. Too many photographers are in essence saying, "This is how I would have made that photograph." Hardly the stuff of analysis.

David
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viewfinder

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #36 on: June 29, 2014, 12:50:09 pm »

Unfortunately "the work" DOES "speak for itself"......

This has been a constuctive, and polite, discussion so far, at least for me, as you will see if you read my first post.  It is actually an important one for this site since Kevin is this sites "publisher" and 'LL' is about the best photo site that one can look at on a daily basis, which I have been doing for these past 10 years.....

The "snippy preconception" remark is noted.

I do seem to remember that we have been here before with Kevins use of Photoshop......last time it was the central European landscapes, maybe The Dolomites, I can't remember the actual scene only it's 'look' after energetic post processing which entirely removed the natural atmosphere and the fact that I could not believe it as somewhere I had actually been.

Obviously I was not one of the privaledged 20 who witnessed the glowing loght in the pumping station, and equally obviously, English light is so much more dingy, palid and colourless than N.American light.   However, I can only believe that the first image of the pumping engine (posted on front page a few days ago) is a very unlikely record of that engine, and 'paints' it in glowing terms both by hue and atmosphere.

Any image can be 'disneyfied'....it takes no skill and even I can do it!  To have visual integrity and make a skillfully toned result that draws in and interests the viewer is MUCH harder.    Since you have published these images on a site whish purports to be taken seriously I would have thought there was more room for discussion but obviously I'm wrong (again!)
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Rand47

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #37 on: June 29, 2014, 01:22:10 pm »

Communication.  An interesting and complex subject.  

Some components:
 
  • Content
  • Mode of expression
  • Tone

Ray, IMO, has failed to communicate effectively on 2.5 of the three listed above.  If he were one of my leadership students I'd give him a .5 for content.  There's not much doubt that he doesn't like brownfield industrial photography.   It is popular today to think that negative tone and blunt-come-aggressive modes of communication are merely "honest."  Hogwash, I say - more like pedantic and rude.

Rand
« Last Edit: June 29, 2014, 01:24:36 pm by Rand47 »
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Rand Scott Adams

viewfinder

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #38 on: June 29, 2014, 01:25:55 pm »

Sharon...Thanks for polite post...

Well since ~Kevin is this important sites publisher and has the opportunity to post his work on the front page to be considered by some very skilled people~ Then, yes, he DID effectively 'ask' for it to be considered in it's expression and effectiveness or not......This is NOT a gallery site which offers images for sale, it's a practical photography site which puports to offer guidance and counsel to supposedly less skillful photographers.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2014, 01:29:06 pm by viewfinder »
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viewfinder

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Re: Heavy Metal by Kevin Raber
« Reply #39 on: June 29, 2014, 02:21:49 pm »

Sharon,...I don't disagree with anything in your post.

On the top of your blog there is currently a shot of a steep beach scene, which, if I have understood, is threatened with erosional collapse......     Your treatment of subject is entirely appropriate.   However, I'm sure that we both can agree that were you to have got carried away in Photoshop and given the image an enchanting glow the whole meaning and purpose of that image would have been not just lost, but truned into a travesty of the actual subject and situation.....(?)
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