OVERFLIGHT

Folks,

Once again, the place to discuss the POTW system or criteria is not here on the image itself. Please stop.

Post on this thread or start another in the 'Site Help' forum if you need to vent about some grave injustice. But if you are posting here, then you should be talking about the photo. If you've got nothing to say about the photo, then say nothing at all please.

" Excellent capture " :-)  Outstanding work!

The parallel lines of water and bird's wings are very nice, looks like the bird is watching the lonely figure on the shore. Good composition light, exposure texture and colors.
I join as well Jim Adams "(it's immaterial to me that the seagull is added in with a layer.)"

If I look at a photo of a man somewhat differently than I look at the man himself (the photo is not the man) and if I feel differently about a sculpture of a man than I feel about men themselves, why would I not pay attention to whether or not I'm looking at a collage or not? Never understood that. The medium and process relate to intimately to the message and the piece itself for me to pretend to ignore it or not care about it.

What I appreciate about good collages, such as ManRay's and others, is precisely the sense of construction that can be "built into" them, the "acknowledged unreality" if you will. Part of the joy is in being in touch with the building up of an image by a good collagist.

The photo before us seems to be pretending to be a straight photo and is failing, due to relationships of size and perspective. If the photographer wasn't, in fact, trying to emulate a single photo, then the collage itself just isn't very interesting. It amounts to a bird being pasted into a landscape, somewhat obviously. Which gets a kind of a "so what" from me.

I hesitate to hypothesize how I'd feel about this were it a straight photo, since it's not, but I'd probably move past it quickly. Other than the attempted drama through perspective, there's a heaviness and stagnancy to the bird which just doesn't work for me. What seems to be asking for a sense of movement and grace just kind of lies there.

Decisive moments are often a part of a photo. A collage does not capture a decisive moment in the same way an on-the-spot photo does. They are simply different animals, neither one is better or worse than the other. There is surely something to be said for that feeling that "he was there, he saw that and captured that, as it was happening" which photos have a unique power to convey. Collages, on the other hand, have a unique power to create something else. Even they are "about" decisive moments, they have a different kind of edge to them. Ignoring that difference would lessen my own experience of both photos and collages.

Fred G. hits the real nail on the real head.

That this is a composite pretending to be a straight photograph is a problem and part of a bigger problem. The composition is inept. The pasted on seagull looks stuffed. The concept is uninteresting. How much would this image turn you on if it were a straight shot? I would not be all that much interested. As a sloppy and unimaginative composite this POW is a total turn off.

There are no rules. You as the artist can do anything you want as long as you can get away with it. This artist does not get away with it.

What I've been thinking is that there just isn't enough of a connection between the bird and the man. The bird is huge, and the man is tiny and far away, so the picture doesn't convey a sense of something about to occur between the two. Nor can you read anything about the man (is it a man?) since he is so far away.

It's a nice novelty, this picture, but not compelling. I think maybe I prefer the version without the bird that John linked to a few days ago.

p.s. I took a quick look at Armindo's portfolio, and I saw several B&W people pictures that really do draw you in, so it's not as though he doesn't know how to do that. He does.

Agree with Stephen Penland. If you add anything there, it is a different story. You don't want to "create" something. Once I read Marc Adaamus's words, and he said he would show people the real face of the place, not "man-made". He does not want people to see his picture first and then later find the place is different from his picture or photo.

That's exactly why Armindo chose to PhotoShop this image. He didn't execute to the liking of many who have joined in this discussion - myself included. I take issue with the size of the bird - ridiculously large. The lighting on the bird seems to severe especially considering that the tiny man figure casts no shadow at all. And there's something unnatural and unpleasant about the color palette. I've viewed Armindo's other beach scenes and find the sand and sea colors in most are less yellow, more realistic and pleasing.

Can't wait for next week's POTW :)

<<<You don't want to "create" something.>>>

Wanghan, you might not "want to create something," which is perfectly fine. But, many photographers have no interest in doing what Marc Adamus does. Many don't want to show the real face of anything, or what they convince themselves is the "real" face of something. And many do, in fact, want to make something man made. Especially since they ARE making something man made, which is a photo, a very man made thing. Now, I don't have a problem with anyone -- you, Marc, or anyone else -- wanting to stay as true to nature as they think they can. But no one should be telling anyone else what they "don't" want to do.

What I look for is whether it's done well and whether it looks interesting to me as a photo or a collage or a painting or a sculpture or whatever it is.

Fred, I agree with what you've just stated and with what you've stated previously, a portion of which I've highlighted above. It's the "pretending" that bothers me more than anything, and I tried to emphasize that in my original post. While I have a strong preference for "straight" photos in my own photography, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate collages and very significant digital alterations in the works of others (some of which you will find in my favorites folder). Once we get past the fact that this is a collage, there are some aesthetic aspects of Armindo's image that I like, and I've stated these (and there are some aspects of his POW that don't hold up as well -- I chuckled at the description from Ian of an "f64" look, and I think he's absolutely right; photographers often have a good eye for details, and Ian picked up this one that I had missed).

For some viewers, all of this is a non-issue because to them it's only the end result that seems to matter (the aesthetics, story told, uniqueness, and other desirable attributes most of us desire in an image). I find myself agreeing with another group that believes "process" is also an attribute of an image. That doesn't mean that one process is inherently "better" than another; it just means I want to know how it was made so I can evaluate and appreciate the image with that "process attribute" in mind. Being made by combining two shots and passing it off as a single shot just doesn't fly with me (pun intended). Armindo has stated the 2-photo origin of some of his other images, but he didn't do that with this image, and that may be nothing more than an innocent oversight on his part.

Amazing beautiful image with great colors and texture. Armindo the more I look at it the more I like it! Congratulations for the POW honor! Warm regards.

makes a good album cover, or illustration for a book cover; but i cry to not have the pleasure of seeing a realistic naturalistic bw image of a gull's perspective of a lone human on the beach. nothing else to say about it. dp

Since this photo is a act of fantasy, maybe this a giant seagull that sees the human below as lunch.

I like the IDEA beind the perspective. The parallel lines, and big bird ,are connecting earth and sky( which the bird symbolizes) to a big unity of universe. The small human figure is symbolique to the existence of man in this universe/space .I find the colors and light stongly illuminating this space and are adding to the idea and atmospher of the scene.. Thats my reading of this photo.

The lighting seems blatantly inconsistent and so I take it as intentional kitsch, a critical comment on popular taste. But I could be dead wrong.

An imposible perspective for a single photograph (unless you strap a go-pro on another seagull); but, one of imagination. I commend Armindo for creativity and, as my friend Jim points out, the composition. Some may say it is camp. The execution isn't perfect. So what. That is somewhat a transient thing anyway given technological developments.
This approach is no less entertaining than books or movies based on events from the perspective of an animal. Jack London's books were wildly popular. He wasn't Shakespeare; yet, he took us places that we could not go in reality.

Nice idea for a collage.  Am bothered, however, by the shadow under the left wing.  Iwould photoshop it out and improve the illusion...  Just my opinion.  Nice colors, btw.