Lily

Ok, what happened to the Solar Eclipse?? The lily is admirable as a swatch, or as a spread, but is pretty much devoid of any strong composition (not that this is a bad thing), but I personally would've liked to see a tighter shot of the lilly.

For me this is not a picture of a lily but a nice composition that includes a small number of components. If there were more lilies I would have also liked a tight shoot of them. As it is I like the image as an environmental composition.

I think you should try a tighter crop of the scene. Try arranging the composition in such a way that the left lily is in the top left corner and the right lily is at the bottom right. That would resuly in a horizontal kind of frame.

The colors are all great!

This is pretty mediocre for a photo of the week. There is too much distraction around the lilies:

The highlight behind the lilies completely dominate them.

There is too much empty space in the picture. The green is nice but there is too much of it.

A much tighter shot would have worked better.

 

This is a beautiful result. Moody, ineffable. Defies left-brain analysis.

Look at the broad swaths of light and dark, green and yellow. Those are what draw my eye; I find something interesting in all parts of the frame. The flowers are irrelevant to me.

The processing has rendered what would otherwise be an average image into a remarkably mysterious, beautiful picture.

Beautiful. Welcome to modern (contemporary) photography, folks.

It makes my eyes hurt.

This doesn't do too much for me, but it's also too small for me to really contemplate. Isn't the point of having small/medium/large so that those of us with excessive screen real estate and bandwidth can look at a real enlargement of the image?

Cann't say I immensely enjoyed this new wave image! To me, in a way at least, the image looked as if someone elected not to check the fine print through an enlarger in the dark room. Just a joke!

I love the colors. Although I see the point of some others that perhaps "better" composition might have improved it some I think a different compostion may have also taken away from the benefit he gained through the reflections with this composition. To me it has the look and feel of an French Impressionist painting.

 

I would like to have seen a larger example to see it some more detail. Overall very unique and pleasing to me.

 

I had seen in some photo mags recently interesting use of water reflections to striking effect for backgrounds. I believe one was in OP not too long ago and was a bird starkly silhouetted against a reflection of golden autumn foliage from the opposite shore. The ripples, softness and glow of colors was quite interesting. It's got me excited to go out and see what I can do in this style. If I can get this kind of result I'd be very pleased!

I seem to be the spoil-sport around here, so true to form...

 

Im sure the photonet elves chose this to spite those of us who criticized their last choice of POW.

 

Love the colours? Look at POW, Oct 1st. Too much space, yet cluttered at the same time. The lily is only about 5 pixels in size on my screen at Large setting, so I cannot even guess what a tighter composition would have resulted in. It defies left-brain analysis because it defies the eye. It defies the eye because we are trained to look for patterns and shapes, outlines and shadows, brightness and contrast and detail. This photo has nothing. I suppose Im not arty enough. Not that the right side of my brain can analysis it any better. (Although from right-side view, I like his choice of OM-10, a truly great camera, although not the cross-processing - why?)

 

If you are excited by this image, you need to give the web a break for a while.

 

The stated definition of Photonet is:

photo.net is an online learning community of people improving their photography expertise.

 

Can someone point out to me what I am meant to learn from this photo?

Has anyone improved their photographic expertise because this photo was chosen? Fill me in, please.

 

We truly need to abandon the modern idea that weird is necessarily beautiful. Email me if you want to flame *me*, dont fill this page up with garbage.

 

Those points dealt with, I guess this is a great image.

First of all, thanks to Ryan for sharing this photo. I think that it is a good attempt at capturing something unique. For me however, the background is the photo and I find the lilies distracting, Id love to see this photo from an angle that does not include the lilies. I think it would have been very striking.

Thanks, Stan

 

Sam this wasn't meant to educate but to affirm.

Don't listen to Samuel, Ryan, he is obviously just mad that he doesn't have any photos featured as 'Photograph of the Week'. God forbid it actually be an amazing image. Despite the title of this work the lily obviously isn't the centerpoint and focus of this image so you don't need a nice and neat closeup of the lilies. If that is what you had the image wouldn't be nearly as beautiful. The beauty of the image lies in the fact that it is simple yet complex. No, it doesn't follow the standard "rules" of what a photograph should or shouldn't be with the third, third, third theory but that is what is great about it. All of the famous artists in history are famous and have started a new wave because they didn't follow the "standard". The image looks perfect as a cross-processed image and would be extremely boring if it weren't. Maybe, since you asked, what you are supposed to learn from this image, Samuel, is that photographic art doesn't necessarily need to fit neatly within the confines of society standards. Great image Ryan, well worth praise. I especially loved the other images of yours in the folder on this site. If you all have a chance take a look... they are spectacular!

Sam is not going to learn anything here. This picture deals with the subjective/emotional. It requires too much of the viewer: acceptance/acquiescence for Sam to ever get it. Yet for others it is as easy as gazing out the kitchen window.

I just dont understand. But, it's more than likely my deficiency. This is the future? Where is my DeLorian Doc,,,,,,,,,,

Improving photography expertise sometimes means understanding what makes an interesting photo, liked by some and not by others.

 

Of course, on same level, you may not be able break it down. It's like trying to describe a color. But isn't that what's great about photography, that it's not physics (no offense intended to any physicist not into photography)

I think this image is too small to judge as a photograph. Art, maybe. Not as a photo. As an abstract image, I like it, even though it says little about the photographic quality. At this size, the photo could have been taken with a wedding-reception one-time-use camera, or it could be a reduced paint-by-number and we would never know. This might be an excellent photo. I can't tell.

 

My photos may suck: http://www.jimd.com/gallery.htm : but at least you can tell they suck by looking at them...

 

(1600x1200 screen and squinting)

He saw something that had great potential. whether or not he captured that great potential is I think up to the viewer of the photograph.

I think he has the ability to do better.

Once again I think it is another photograph that has incredible colors but not much substance.

I think that photo.net is pushing small pictures to save bandwidth. This isn't something that I'd pick as picture of the week, but it's OK. Maybe the judges are burned out by looking at thousands of the same thing and are looking for pictures that are different. Philip Greenspun had the bends recently and maybe this is what the world looks like to him these days.

A little fooling with Photoshop, the Paint Daubs filter and a little tweaking of saturation and contrast.....and voila! (With all due respect and apologies to the French Impressionists and Ryan Notch.)

 

;)

I did a little surfing and checked out Ryan's website and found "Lily" in a larger format so for all you people out there getting a little old and having a hard time viewing the image on this site drop over to www.RyanNotch.com and check out his site. In addition to this image he also has many other great photographs.

With all due respect, I can't make a single thing out in this shot. It's too small, the open areas dominate the frame and distract attention from the apparent subject, and the main subject(which I never would have identified except by the title) is so small compared to the rest of the image that it leaves me wondering what's going on. Nice color saturation, but I have to admit, as much as I respect the photographer here I think that a better selection could have been made.