Crit : What are you shooting ?

Last summer I came to visit an artist who runs a shared ceramic studio in San

Francisco, near Cow Palace. It's in a postwar industrial building turned an artists'

harbor, where you also find a piano rebuilding guru, a dancing school, painters and

also sculptors.

 

I was framing and metering aimlessly at some kind of an installation art at the

flourescent lit windowless hallway. Then I heard footsteps, and here she came. I

quickly took a few steps back, trying to include the walking her; she noticed me and

was wondering what I was taking, then I pressed the button.

 

I wouldn't have taken this photo if she didn't come into my view; the picture would

have been very static if her left foot wasn't blurred by a 1/8 sec shutter; had the lens

been 2 stops brighter then I might have cranked up the speed and froze her motion;

of luck, all the right things happened. Somehow I also find her attention to the piece

of art (if you agree it is ...) kind of curious.

 

I wish I had brought with my own FG and loaded with Tri-X, because this borrowed

Bessa-T was already half way thru a roll of Portra VC 400; the green cast of the lab

print almost made me believe it is a signature of a fully-opened CV 28mm f/3.5, but

soon I realised it was from the flourescent lighting; can't live with the wierd color, so

the negative scan was desaturated by PhotoShop, and contrast adjusted; no

sharpening.

 

And if you ask, I didn't request her to walk for my photo. This was not staged.<div></div>

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its kinda weird, so i like it

When I was kid, my cousins had a TV that they had to stick a sponge curler between two knobs for it to work�but damn!! <p>Nice pix, I like it, good tones and exposure. Would have preferred some type of frame.

Maybe it gets so windy in the building that they need the rocks to keep the TV from blowing away?!

 

Sorry, but I think it's just OK. Fine technically (nice job of desaturating BTW), but not a knockout. The blurred foot notwithstanding, it's still a static picture--her expression & body language don't convey anything special to me.

7% solution.....

 

S. Holmes

sorry it makes me think of a security photo from a warehouse. Technically good but no interest.

Haha, if only we can have security photos that you can really recognise somebody :-D That was actually an on-going installation under the theme "quake", and it's the Bay Area ...

 

I guess we're expecting something more bizzare from an artists' harbor in SF; sorry to disappoint you guys, but you will have different ideas if you were there : the place is lively, esp during open studio sessions in weekends. Not much I can do to the very flat lighting, but I can do better with the desaturation. I'll be back :)

That's my TV! I wondered where it went.