Upsala

As beautiful as it is - did you merge two pictures into one?

Excellent.

A stunning photo.

A nice shot, but IMHO the colour 'tweak' is too exaggerated and makes it look fake or 'less genuine'. When I first saw it I thought "that can't be real, surely - is there such a place where ice bergs look like that?", but then as I read the comments I thought that maybe it is real and I started to think what an amazing capture of life on our planet the picture really was, but then someone did point out (who was there apparently) that the ice was not actually that blue and it is therefore enhanced probably beyond reason. And while I have no significant objection to enhancement here and there, I think photos that reflect what was actually there in truth are more pleasing than one's that just have been photoshopped to 'look nice' because they concist of colours that please our retinas.

 

All of that said though, as a piece of photographic art, this rocks and I expect many people would hang it on their walls or give it as a gift. As a piece of art, it looks great.

I have had the pleasure of seeing this glaicer myself and think that you have ruined a good shot by greatly exaggerating the colour. When you consider that the other areas of the picture looks overcast and stormy, it looks even more bizzare to me.

 

Nice composition though...

 

 

Thank you all for the appreciation.

 

But attention philosophers and arbitrators of what is real and what is art: Do not disparage your criticism by lack of knowledge:

 

There is a page in Wikepedia about "glacial blue ice" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_%28glacial%29

 

There is another photo and explanation of blue ice in this page :

http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/5C.html

 

Frans Lanting has a famous photo of blue iceberg in his site

http://www.franslanting.com/gallery/index.php?pageId=100&id=14944&start=0&lightbox=&search_mode=advanced

 

or search "blue" and "iceberg" in advanced search mode in Frans Lanting stock photography page: http://www.franslanting.com

 

Or search "blue iceberg" in "Yahoo Images" or "Google Image" or "Ask image", after some pages you will see something similar.

 

Muy bella imagen, tu retoque ha contribuido a este precioso contraste. felicidades.

isidre

Fantastic picture. Thank you for the information on how this happens too. Do you have the specs for what settings you took this shot on?

And for those of you who say "Ive seen ice burgs they don't look anything like this." If you see a picture of an alligator coming almost its entire body length out of the water to catch a bird but have never SEEN that, are you saying it doesn't happen? Its called specific conditions.

-Mike

"Do not disparage your criticism by lack of knowledge"

 

 

For those whom they are thinking, -Ted Shith, Jan, Lol, Joseph, and adheres, photography is a documentary device, you are totally wrong. To those, to whom they thing, the subject supposed to be exactly, has to represent the real subject, in color and form, also, totally wrong. And also for those people to whom travelled only few places, or not observe nature in day and night and adhere time, different season, altitude, etc., etc., and etc, you my surprised, what nature can produce. In small and big. . . . . Photography to day is an art form as well, like canvass for an artist. ( except family and pets photos, and occasionally some nude garbages.) Why do you gays arguing with Vincent, Dali, Vasarelly, etc. they images not representing the trough life. Artistic images has to pleas you senses, not a police report. If this ice is pink, and a pleasure to see it, it is O.K. ! The camera+lens is a brash in you hand only, and with out you good imagination, a worthless piece of hardware. The canvass is your screen and the paper you my printing it out. You are approaching in the wrong way, by lack of knowledge, when you questioning the validity of detail in the image. Like abstract. I hate when people standing in-front of an abstract image, and asking the question; what is this image want to shown? Turning they head to figure it out, what it is shoving.

An image can represent many thing. A feeling, a message, a statement, and etc., etc.

This image is wonderful, a nice photograph and an artistic piece of work as well.

 

Congratulation Ricardo, ( Ricardo Bevilaqua, July 11, 2007; 09:32 A.M.) educate the less informed and experienced.

 

Best regards; Bela

what I see here is a wonderful photograph depicting the miracles of nature, the stark variations of colours/contrasts here really make this image stand out.

to the left of the image the blue iceberg looks as though it is the head of a monstrous bird(perhaps a peacock)its beak already immersed into the sea water and head soon to follow - perhaps its looking foe a fish?

If one were to look I am sure you will agree that there is what looks like an eye as if looking straight at the viewer.

we are lucky to have the chance to see with our eyes these marvels for soon they may be gone and become only a distant memory of what once was.

 

 

Wonderful work my dear friend.

 

 

Regards

 

 

Hugh

Greg Mitchell wrote:

 

"Being from "Iceberg Alley", I've seen many icebergs of all shapes and sizes, but this is the first time I have ever seen anything like this, it's so...blue!"

 

Well, anything is possible when you ramp up the saturation slider *well* beyond reality..;-)

 

Ricardo, it probably is not a good idea to compare your heavily photoshopped image to a great editorially based nature and wildlife shooter who's adherence to strict content guidelines is very well known.

 

He does indeed have some blue ice photos, but they are all naturally colored. He even has one that is wider than the tighter, more saturated scene of the penguins where the sun is behind a cloud and the natural saturation drops off naturally.

 

Besides all the photoshopped images in your portfolio and the *Huge* boost in saturation, the dead give away on this image is the lack of contrast on the highlights on the water. Why on earth would the sun hit the iceberg evenly with uber-strong light then conveniently fall off *right* at the water line?

 

Feel free to post an unprocessed raw somewhere for us to to have a look at. Otherwise, fake-a-roni.

 

I know this sounds harsh, but it just seems that more and more, people want to fake out what nature will always do best at.

 

I just can't believe how much faked out imagery is on Photo.net. I think that is really sad.

Thank you all for the criticism. I need to make some considerations about reality, photoshop and art.

 

 

My blue iceberg is a real thing. There are an explanation of blue ice and icebergs here:

"http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/blue-icebergs.shtml". To see blue icebergs like this, search google image or flickr, for example "http://www.flickr.com/photos/mshandro/2325728935/"

 

I've never heard a photographer complain about another photographer using the technology of grad ND filter, polarizer, flash or a changing film type to alter how colors are presented, yet I've heard them complain about using Photoshop. For some reason, filter or flash is okay, but computer technology is not. All this seems to be less about "capturing reality" and more about "fear of Photoshop". If working hard a photo before the shutter click is your criteria of value why would you not like to shoot with a daguerreotype?

 

A photographer can tell whatever story he wants without violating the "reality", he show only what he wants to show to emphasize his interpretation. Why photography implies veracity if it is a a choice of perspective and interpretation of the photographer and depends of the public interpretation too? Why after shutter click manipulations and interpretations are more important than manipulations and interpretations before the shutter click? Is not all this a personal choice or a personal "lie"? Are captive animals shots shown as "wildlife" shots and staged acting shown as "spontaneous" street shots more "real" than photoshop cloning out powerlines, and other undesirable picture elements?

 

What is more important to you as a potential buyer, a concern with an image's "reality" or the artistic impact of the image? See the landscape photos at photo.net. How much of the visual word we all live in is represented at photo.net? 2%? Why the conceptual separation between painting and photography is important to the modern art? In the modern art the concepts of sculpture and painting for example are in permanent change. Do you know really when you see a photo of "reality"? Really?

 

Ansel Adams in his book "Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs", pag 162, says he disappeared a prominent graffiti in the photo "Winter Sunrise". Pag 40, in the very famous photo "Moonrise" the sky has been burned to black to highlight the moon--in earlier prints you could still see all the clouds. "His final, expressive print, is not how the scene looked in reality, but rather how it felt to him emotionally." In the book "Ansel Adams: Some Thoughts About Moonrise", by Mary Street Alinder, 1999.

 

Robert Capa made no pretense of journalistic detachment during the Spanish Civil War, he was Communist partisan of the loyalist cause, and was known to photograph staged maneuvers, a common practice at the time. He staged Republican attacks on Fascist positions during the Spanish Civil War and filmed them, noting that they looked "more real" than if they had actually taken place. "The Capa Cache", New York Times, Randy Kennedy, January 27, 2008 and "Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa" by Alex Kershaw, ed Macmillan.

 

W Eugene Smith "laid a silhouette in the corner of a photograph of Albert Schweitzer, and paid actors to pose as rural villagers, and made subjects repeat over and over again for his camera actions that Smith later presented as spontaneous." In "W. Eugene Smith: His Techniques and Process" by Paul T. Hill in "W. Eugene Smith: Photographs 1934-1975", Harry Abrams, 1998.

 

Robert Doisneau most recognizable work is "Kiss by the Hotel de Ville", a photo of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris, presented as spontaneous. In 1993 Doisneau admited that he actually posed the shot in 1950 using actor/models. http://www.famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Kissing_Couple

 

Art Wolf "Copied and pasted five additional cubs into his photograph of a cheetah mother originally photographed with only one cub." In Kenneth Brower "Photography in the Age of Falsification" in Atlantic Monthly, May 1998.

 

"On the morning of September 11, in New York, an experienced photojournalist, Thomas Hoepker, shoot a group of young people sitting by the waterfront with the plume of smoke rising across the river. The New York Times saw the photograph as a prescient symbol of indifference and amnesia. To one of photo subjects "we were in a profound state of shock and disbelief, I denounced Hoepker for not trying to ascertain the state of mind of the photograph's subjects and for misinterpreting the moment." In "How the Truth Gets Framed by the Camera" by Louis P. Masur in "The Chronicle Review" November 23, 2007.

 

Galen Rowell: "One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it.If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better."(http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/personal-style.shtml)

 

Eddie Adams, the AP photographer who snapped the photo of South Vietnamese General Loan executing a defenseless Vietcong prisoner, and earned a Pulitzer Prize for the picture, says: " People believe in photographs, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, what would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?" Just moments before that photo had been taken, several of General Loan men had been gunned down. One of his soldiers had been at home, along with the man's wife and children. Adams discovered that Loan was a beloved hero in Vietnam, to his troops and the citizens and fought for the construction of hospitals in South Vietnam.

National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg, August 26, 1999

 

 

7/7 Excellent!

What is relevant in contemporary photography?

 

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."

-Oscar Wilde

 "What is relevant in contemporary photography? Photography is just many things. But there are amateurs policing the boundaries of what art and photography are. The photography has expanded in such a way that it’s really hard to define what it really is. So no matter what you say about photography, it is, by necessity, limited to a fraction of it.

The more amateurish thinking you have, the higher you aim your ambition to find an anchor in an old practice or imitate Ansel Adams, in a kind of congealing of art photography around the set of values of the perfect image. But what about Diane Arbus or Walker Evans incapacity to print decently? Why believe that photos must have an impeachable veridical relationship to their subject matter, ever? A lot of the great Robert Capa or Brassaï pictures, for example, are staged pictures.

The difference between descriptive and art photography is an obvious authorship marker."

- Paraphrases from SFMOMA symposium.

 

"It is rather amusing, this tendency of the wise to regard a print which has been locally manipulated as irrational photography–this tendency which finds an esthetic tone of expression in the word faked. In the very beginning, when the operator controls and regulates this time exposure, when in the dark-room the developer is mixed for detail, breadth, flatness, or contrast, faking has been resorted to. In fact, every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible."

-"Camera Work, No.1, January 1903, by Edward Steichen(1879 – 1973, American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator)

 

 "The falsification of photography didn't start with Photoshop, it started with photography. You could look at a photograph and form your own interpretation of it.Are we that much smarter now? Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations as Secretary of State and showed photographs of plants in Iraq that he claimed produced chemical or biological weaponry. On that basis we went to war."- Errol Morris on Photography and Reality

 There is a problem in the notion of good art as a good technical skill that can lead to success. A photo popularity ranking is random. Why a photo is popular may not have any answer. The attractiveness of a photo increases with the number of people liking it. The popularity play as large a role in determining the rank of a successful photo as the technical skills qualities. What we call talent usually comes from success, rather than its opposite. www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html

 In Henri Matisse time, his bold colors and distorted forms were outrageous. A century later, what was once shocking is now considered beautiful art. There are no rules of art that explain the evolution of art in history. Why would anyone think that their taste can predict what is necessary to make a work beautiful or meaningful?

"If absolute truth were the only thing photography had to offer, it would have disappeared a century ago. Photography isn't merely a window on the world, it's a portal into the unconscious, wide open to fantasies, nightmares, obsessions, and the purest abstraction"- Vince Aletti, art editor and photography critic

How much are manipulated photographs worth? The most expensive photograph was sold at Christie’s New York. Andreas Gursky's Rhine II became the first photograph to be sold at auction for over $4 million. It is a manipulated photograph.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8883801/The-ten-most-expensive-photographs.html http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/how_much_are_photographs_worth_and_why_are_we_talking_about_it/