Site

[eric stolk]

www.rickstolk.com

[love4leica]

Nice shots Eric. What gear?

[eric stolk]

Tnx!

All photo's with M6 and Summicron

[beatrice_flowers]

A man of few words! Maar, stille wateren... :-)

 

Nice, but very *very* tiny pics.

[eric stolk]

Tiny?

Depends on screen resolution, and I've chosen for the most used 1024 x 768

[beatrice_flowers]

That's my rez. Your pics are 380 pixels wide; that's tiny... hard to get anything beyond a general impression.

[eric stolk]

....but you're right: the next series will be larger...Any thoughts?

[beatrice_flowers]

I make mine 650 wide if horizontal, and 550 high if vertical.

[eric stolk]

ok, thank you

very impressed by your site BTW ;-)

[Karim Ghantous]

Eric, firstly, thanks for sharing. Your site is nicely put together. It is to the point and lets the images speak for themselves. I wonder why so many people think they need Flash when bare HTML is enough? And navigation was easy - I could use the keyboard (tab, return) to flip through the pics. They were a bit small though. I don't see why you couldn't have made them a little bigger. Don't be too paranoid about copyright (if that is what you were worrying about).

 

As for the images themselves I didn't fall in love with them. But the subject matter was dear to my heart. I simply love old buildings, especially if they are decaying. So beautiful. And I note that many of your shots (I only viewed the Liverpool portfolio but I'll look at the rest later) do not have any people visible in them. I like that as it lends a certain stillness to the images.

 

Some of the photos really did not have a point. I think a photo's point should be obvious but some of yours left me wondering why you bothered showing them. I have no problem with prolific shooting (shoot now, ask questions later) but you should have left some out.

 

Your technique is technically good but limited, I feel. It wasn't just the fact that you only used one lens (a big mistake IMHO) but you didn't really change perspective much. You always seemed to want to stand a certain distance away from your subject. If you want to use one lens, fine, but use your feet a little.

 

Overall I like your stuff and am looking forward to viewing your other portfolios. I'd like to share my pics with you in return but have none on my site. But your site has inspired me to put something together for my own photos.

[eric stolk]

Thank you Karim for those comments.

If you like old buildings, please look at my portfolio, here at this site..just click on my name..

You're right about some pictures should have been left out: when I was putting my site together, I think I wasn't being self-critical enough...Haven't worked on my site for some time now, but when I will, I will put some new work on it, remove some old and make them larger.

Thank you for your input.

Rick

[peter_evans4]

<p>Luckily Flash seems not to be needed here. Or anyway I ignored the

prompt for Flash and saw the pictures anyway.</p><p><em>Some of the

photos really did not have a point. I think a photo's point should be

obvious but some of yours left me wondering why you bothered showing

them.</em></p><p>Yes, the "Haarlem" series seems particularly, um,

pointless — though I strongly disagree that a photo's point should

be obvious (unless you're producing propaganda, of

course).</p><p><em>Your technique is technically good but limited, I

feel. It wasn't just the fact that you only used one lens (a big mistake

IMHO)</em></p><p>I don't see anything wrong with that, either in

general or here.</p><p><em>I will put some new work on it, remove some

old and make them larger.</em></p><p>I'd aim to remove half of

"Liverpool". I can't say anything about "Haarlem" as those photos leave

me blank. Yes, you might want to make the photos bigger, in terms of

pixels; however, you should compress them. In terms of bytes, they

"weigh" at least twice as much as they should.</p><p>Meanwhile, some

of the Liverpool shots are excellent.</p>

[agardner58]

I love the Liverpool and Manchester shots...right up my alley (so to speak!)

[eric stolk]

thank you.

"...you should compress them. In terms of bytes....."

How do I do that?

[saotome_genma]

Use the <a href="http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&q=save+for+web+tutorial&btnG=B%C3%BAsqueda+en+Google&meta=">save for web</a> command in Photoshop.

[Karim Ghantous]

Ah, but not everyone has PhotoShop. For Windows, IrfanView, a nice media viewer, can compress JPEGs and has a quality level which you can fine tune. The GIMP, for all platforms, can do it too - IIRC it has output preview so you can see in real time what the final image will look like. On the Macintosh, Graphic Converter is excellent.

[jtk]

Your shots are all self-evident, which is fine, perhaps the most important value in any photo.

 

Because they're all "banal" (in the photographic "good" sense) or simply pretty graphic images (somebody walking next to a building, a red phone booth in an inconsequential brown setting) I don't grasp the logic of putting them online (trying to sort that out for my own work, I'm not being negative about yours).

 

I guess I'm left a little hungry by your site. I'd like a "punch line" or a narrative, or maybe just some music. Being left hungry is better than being bored. It'd be cool if those joints could be savored over a modem.

 

I don't think any of the technical criticisms have any value whatsoever.

 

I do like the use of Flash, but I almost missed it in my haste. Too much coffee, man.