Honeydew (from "Objets de Vertu")

Congratulations, Leslie. Your portfolio is one of my favorites, always exploring something new in a creative way. I alwyas enjoy reading your technical set-up notes, as well. All the work you put into each shot makes me pause and try to think a bit more about what else I can do when I'm planning to make a picture.

 

I do really like the way you've played with the translucency of the melon rind, here. Anyone looking for more emotional impact needs go no further than the rest of your portfolio. This image, though, is about light, and seeing just what else is possible with light when you play with ordinary objects.

Thanks again, folks. Of course I appreciate the POW panache, but (pace Tom Menegatos) I stand firm: ratings are silly. Before today what I consider my best photo to date got only three ratings in a month; another favorite was all over the map with ratings from 1 through 10. "Cleverness" weighs in the balance as heavily as "esthetics." And contributors are ranked on this basis! You can rise in the ranks by deleting whatever folks don't like. The intention's good, but come on. What matters are the comments. I can tell from somebody's comment whether or not their head's screwed on straight, but a number from one to ten tells me nothing I can use to improve my photos.

As for having something to say, sometimes a picture is just for pretty. In any case words work best when you want to say something, e.g. the footnote to my 9/11 folder.

It's technically accurate. But, this particular image belongs in a school text book. Perhaps, you should let it mold for a few weeks and shoot it again to add interest. Congratulations anyway...

Leslie--a nice pic and a worthy PoW. I remember it from the rotation a month or two ago. The (optical) complementarity of the colors and the light make the shot. What bothers me is insufficent contrast on the shadow v. the board. To my eyes, there should be more shadow or none at all, not the hesitant half-shadow here. A slightly lighter board may help you with the shadow and still preserve that complementarity.

 

Enjoy your week, and don't let the jealousy-crazed get you down. Best, KEP

Certainly a good selection for a POW :"beautiful images from some of the most unlikely subjects". Much of Leslie's work talks about it. He deserves it.

 

I'm not sure about this particular selection, he has many other better shots that deserve to be a POW. But I know that's only a matter of personal taste...

 

Also I like to find a POW to be a color shot. It seems to exist certain tendency to consider a shot "good" or "artistic" only if they're B&W. I definitely don't agree.

 

I also wonder why till now a digitally manipulated image haven't become a POW. I know that's a lot have been said about it (see the thread "Should Photo.net welcome Computer art?")

Watch out, that I said "digitally manipulated" and not "digitally created" images. After all, there's a lot "manual manipulated" images (unnatural tonning, cropping, collages, filters, cross processing, etc). Why not 'to PoW' such images too???

Congratulations on POW. I just wish another photo of yours had been selected. This is a solid good example of a simple, stylish still photo, and it'd work well in a larger study of shapes etc. As a stand alone, it's fine but as a few others already pointed out, a bit dull. Nothing really wrong with that, but your work, Leslie, really seem to make a statement., and does so very much to your advantage.

 

There seem to be thought behind your work, and you succeed in both upsetting and moving the viewer. There seem to be much more idea and emotion behind some of your photos than just a camera's representation of reality, and therefore you are IMO a true artist. I do find some of your photos even disqusting although they aren't that brutal, but that just shows how well you make your statement and succeed in playing with the viewer's mind. And your photos also have depth and reveal beauty and many different emotions.

 

Maybe I'm on the wrong trail and reading too much in nothing, but if you consciently try to accomplish what is found in your photos, then you are a true artist and would have deserved a more complex choice of POW. Anyway, nice still and keep up the good work!

but (pace Tom Menegatos) I stand firm: ratings are silly

I just meant that you don't have to worry about getting comments on this photo now that it has been selected POW :) Ratings have been more of a source of amusement. Because this photo introduced me to your work and helped change some of the ways I think about photography I gave it high marks.

I remember when I first saw this image. It was quite some time ago on another site and there were not many details provided. It was a simple yet powerful composition. The colors and light were very appealing. When you provided me with the information about the object and how you created the image I had the same sentiments the elves had.

Any good photographer can point their camera at something beautiful and come up with a beautiful photo. To see beauty in the ordinary to downright ugly and to capture it so well is powerful.

I wouldn't have picked this as your best work either but I like it a lot.

P.S. Néstor, the last two POW's were digitally manipulated.

Leslie - you know I like your work - Congratulations on POW (I think) and I'll come back and comment later... But re: Your comment --"Ratings are Silly". They didn't used to be but they sure are now!!! You have to have a "following"... Just for an experiement I've deleted about 20+ honest ratings from the folder of a member (some were 5/6/7's and some were actually 7's and 8's!) just to see what happens... See anything different lately in the top 10... See how fast one can rise if you have lots of friends... The ratings could be helpful and the list could be honest if more people had the ethics and guts to be honest.

Leslie, I agree that ratings are silly. I prefer to leave a comment over a rating. I like this photo. I like the way the dark blue fades to black, I like the glowing cantaloupe - it's visually appealing to me. In my opinion, this is an image that is more fun when you don't know what the object is. I thought it might be a corn chip or something...

I think you have a ton of creativity in your photos. Some work for me and some don't, but I like the abstract-ness and your use of digital manipulation. I love all the fun things that Photoshop makes possible. It just takes the creativity in a new direction.

I think it's worthy a POW, but I keep thinking the photo that is show at the right of the POW on the main page is almost aways better. I understand that POW is given mostly to photos that help people learn and improve their own photos. POW is not exactly the "best photo".

Technically perfect (I wish I were able to take pictures like this), excellent composition, color contrast, but... it would bore me quite easily, I 'm afraid, the image being cold, sterile. Maybe too perfect? WJ

I've been admiring Leslie's work from afar for awhile now, and am happy to see her (his?) work make POW. I think Leslie is one of the true artists on photo.net, with a distinctive vision.

 

I do want to respond to one part of Leslie's critique of the ratings system. I agree that the system is easily manipulable and therefore not very informative, but the fact that ratings can be "all over the map" is not one of the problems. Much good art -- including this POW -- will generate wildly varying reactions in viewers. Some people think Andrew Wyeth is a lyrical portraitist of America; others think he is a painting-selling shill. Some people think John Cage is a brilliant composer; others think he's barely a musician. Some people think Leslie Hancock's still lifes are beautiful, simple expressions of color and form; others think they are emotionless exercises in lighting.

 

Some art will provoke more uniform responses. Not too many people hate Beethoven (as long as they don't hate classical). Not too many people hate some of the photographers on here (as long as they don't hate photography).

 

I don't take the disagreement as an indication of much.

A nice change to see a 'still life' picked. I don't think there's even a category for it in the critique forum. I realise there may not be an emotional impact for viewers, and that this may devalue the image in their eyes, but sometimes I just want to chill out, forget people, and frivolously study something I hadn't considered before, no matter how insignificant. Maybe still life photography is seen as commercial or eye candy by some, but I like the narrowed focus it places on composition, light, texture, colours, spatial relationships etc, and I like this result. I might prefer to have darker tones & contrast on the texture of the melon however, and a slightly lighter bgrd if I had taken it myself. Personal preferences aside though, nice work Leslie. Congrats.

 

ps Just pushed my monitor brightness up a bit and I retract the lighter bgrd comment. It's too easy to forget we all have different monitors/settings.

Your work, Leslie (Leslie is a man by the way for any who don't know) always seems to demonstrate a vision, a plan and a well executed result. The light coming through the melon, where you positioned the melon, the shadow/form and the simplicity of colors makes this a great still life. Playing with and understanding light and form is a lesson I often learn when browsing your images. Your folders are full of work that is original, some beautiful and some wonderfully strange and some that are downright visually/emotionally disturbing. The disturbing ones are hard to rate. I find them to be powerful and excellent but it is hard to rate it in "asthetics". Yet in originality and creativity - at times you are off the charts. What sets (to me) you apart from others I've seen that have "imaginative" works is that your excecution and technical ability, lighting, composition etc. is usually top notch.

I really like this photo and I must say it's sure a relief from the "human interest" shots of the last few weeks, of people I don't know and really couldn't care less about(I enjoyed last week's POW more than the guy with the hat, however). I think the other photos in this portfolio are really nice also. Here, I like the placement of the object, and the lighting and color, but I was initially excited about the photo because I believed it was a shot of the type of ceramic cup use in the Japanese tea ceremony , and that it was a nice contrast of the asymetrical balance and "imperfections" of certain Zen aesthetics with the perfection of the photographic execution. It wasn't until I looked closer and read the description that I realized it was a honeydew melon. But I still like it and in fact it taught me something about the degree to which the aforementioned ceramics capture the natural beauty present around us. Of course one prior comment referred to the subject as ugly garbage, and I don't understand that, I think it is beautiful garbage.

Strong light, simple composition. Great Shot!!!

 

 

Matt S. says: "...the fact that ratings can be "all over the map" is not one of the problems. Much good art ... will generate wildly varying reactions in viewers."

True enough. Trouble is, numbers are dimensionless counters. Suppose I post a picture of a dog. Madhu loves dogs and Mary hates them, so Madhu gives the picture a 7 while Mary gives it a 3. Or substitute different genres for cats and dogs. The number doesn't tell me whether a viewerobjects to the subject matter, the point of view, the photographer's politics, the color, the composition,the genre, the technique, or...fill in the blanks.

On the other hand, when folks write a comment the truth usually shines through -- I know how seriously to take comments like "Beautiful portrait ofa Cairn Terrier, my Mitzi has the same big eyes" or "Another soulless abstraction."

I like it, muchly (enough to make up a new word, i guess).

 

no emotion? why does everything need to generate an emotional response? every time i turn on the radio or the TV, i'm bombarded by people trying to trigger emotional responses in me. to hell with that...

 

give me some nice clean simple colors. ahh, there we go.

 

-c

There's nothing wrong with it, but it definitely doesn't stand out to me technically or aesthetically.

Affirmative. Most still lifes are like Yanni; after one or two songs you realize it's pretty much the same thing and you get bored.

I think this shot would be more interesting and provocative if you swatted the Honeydew with a 3-iron first. It just needs something - IMHO.

A shot with little views and no rates, that's really discouraging.

 

A shot viewed 2000 times, but not rated, may be a bad signal. May be it has liked to so few people, it doesn't deserve even to be rated...

 

A shot rated more than 10 times, with a relatively good mean (more than 6?), is much better than a well rated one, with a low mean (less than 5?).

 

And a well rated shot (more than 20 rates?) and with a mean over 7 or 8, well... you can be happy.

 

Of course: one comment worth many rates.

 

And that's w/out mention of the inflationary process...

 

So far is what I think by now.

 

**Let's give this rating system the importance it really deserve, not more nor less.**

I once had an argument with a friend who was reading a catalogue in order to "understand" a Picasso... my point was that it either hits you in the eyes, or it doesn't. Different images grab different people (just as different people, music, painters grab different people). So if it's all subjective, what's the point of criticism? I'd like to think it helps us to understand *why* a particular image grabs us.

 

If, otoh, you just see "a piece of garbage", what does your comment add? Is it more helpful than announcing "I have blue eyes"?

 

Hence the problem with ratings: it's not clear what has generated them.

 

Personally I like the image, but I suspect I'd have liked it more if the central object had been more perfectly regular: that would seem to fit into the geometrical objects and colour field style more easily.

 

Finally, what's the problem with digital manipulation? What makes it so different to dodging & burning and various other forms of darkroom trickery? Or artificial lighting? Or waiting for the sun to reach the right position in the sky...

I like the striking colour of the honeydew yellow against the deep blue, lovely sharp focus and composition, well done, 8/9

I'm relieved to know...that Leslie is a he and not a she. Somehow the image of a woman rumaging through the garbage bins and collecting blood (for some of the other images) in some dark alley in NYC wasn't sitting well with me. That said...I agree with Leslie that ratings are somewhat useless, unless accompanied with a comment. Alone, they tell me more about the rater, than the ratee's art. But until the elves do something else, it's a necessary evil to get the few really good and useful comments that some are willing to throw out there. I would like a checkbox when uploading that gives the option of comments only. As for comments on this image....I don't have many. I think I would have liked this very much in B & W. The simplicity of it grabs my attention, but the small black spots that I am assuming are the beginnings of mold spores aren't sitting well with me. I guess it's one of those images that if hung in a gallery, I would have stopped and thought...."I wonder what he was thinking about when he took this shot?" and " I would have never thought about that!" I think your portfoio is very thought provoking and if that was the intent, then...Congratulations! Leslie.

POW? I guess. It has a "look"

I'm with Scott on this one. I like still life, but they need something to make them stand out, and for me there's nothing to latch onto here. It's pleasing enough to the eye, but I don't think I'd be coming back to look at it time and again.