Staying Alive

A Battle exercise (not for real) Comments Please :)

Are u a war photog? Very interesting pic. Caught my attention! Congrats : )

I love the silhouette composition, but the treatment (bleeding the shadows for example) makes it feel more theatrical, and less "real". I don't mind the hi-contrast, but the softening of the edges is what's throwing me.

It is precisely the hurried, soft-focus, grainy, and sometimes tinted look of these photographs that make them look like real battle. To that end, I would not put frame lines around them or sign them with a static font. Perhaps they could be displayed as torn pages from a magazine, individually signed and dated by hand. In any case, these are examples of the photograph as artifice, and you need to be even more clear in the titling of them. Of course, you could always visit Iraq and bring back the real thing. Nice work! Keep it up!

I think what's throwing me here is not the fact that the edges are soft, but the fact that they look processed, not naturally occuring. There's a dark halow around the characters which is quite thick and feels unbelievable to me. Some softness to the edge is good, but this feels photoshoped. Reducing this radius significantly would help it be more believable to me.

 

All in all, I'm picking nits here - the image is striking, and caught my eye so that I wanted to comment on it, it's just this detail which is taking away some of the impact for me.

Please view the origional image to compare, from this you can make your own mind up to which one has the more effect. I like the motion blur It's a sense of movement in getting across dangerous open ground, a sense of urgency. The softening of the smoke was to give it more drama. So you can choose. Thanks for your comments on this :)

Yes, Doug's right about the dark halo, it does look a little strange. This version is still much better than the original but mostly because of its improved contrast. I'd like to see it grainy and contrasty but without the motion blur effect.

Excellent work Ken! I'd love to see morr and discuss real photography.

 

Don Dudenbostel

A little confused?

 

I'm Rob not Ken :)

 

However what would you like to discuss in terms of real photography? What is real photography? I think its being in the right place at the right time with the right light or a bit of imagination!

 

However I look foreward to your reply.

 

Rob

Nice work Rob, knowing the display you went to it's not always easy to get an image there!

 

I think this image works well.

Great work , impressive and well done .