Maria

Feel free to make a coment or a rating

very nice work :)

Just beautiful

Greetings Gunnar, WOW! What stunning colors and impact this shot makes. I really like the intensity of the colors when faded into the black. Exceptional shot! 7/7

The beautifull light is making the strength of this image. It's putting really all attention on the woman.

Awesome photo. Great light. Love it.

Very nice photo. Jitka

Beautifull work!

 

d.

I liked your other work in this series, but this one, I'm a bit ambivalent about. Beautiful? Sure. Nice, rich tones? No doubt.

 

But, I'm beginning to wonder if in our search for the most striking images, we are not sacrificing a principle which, IMO, is more valuable: truth. This woman is not just floating in a sea of darkness as she appears through digital manipulation, but is walking down the road, carrying a basket.

 

This basket is her life, every bit as much as the camera is the photographer's. Yet, this image darkens the basket to oblivion. To the lower part of the picture are also some vegetables. These are also almost completely blacked out.

 

Are we not doing her a disservice in stripping the elements of her life from her--without her consent, of course--and reducing her to a ghost, floating on a sea of irrelevance? If this was a still life of vegetables, then, of course, we can arrange it the way we see fit, based on lighting and mood setting. But, this is a human being, a wife, a mother, an aunt. Is the picture worth treating her like a basket of fruit on a table?

Our friend Emanuel is right in his view, but not completely. This image shows what the photographer saw in the woman. And it is his artistic freedom to show us what he feels, what is important. I think there will never be a fully "wrong" and a fully "right" and that is the wonderful thing in our beloved art.

Thinks

Stephan

Thanks for your comments an rating of this picture, I still hope to receive more. Special tanks to Emmanuel (don?t know if you are a woman ore a man, in Denmark, your name is female) and Stepan, it is really nice when people brings up interesting subjects, such as you do in your comment.

 

First of all I don?t think that any photograph can reveal the whole truth, even in the short flash it were taken. But it can reveal some off the truth. I hope that this one don?t burry the truth off the women situation to deep, and that truth is that beauty can be fond anywhere. This picture of Maria, which was taken at the marked in the outskirts off Quetzaltenango, shows a beautiful proud woman, it does not tell anything off her background, or of the background of poor people or Maya Indians in Guatemala.

The light on the marked was mainly on here and the fruits, and in my postproduction I amplified that, a thing I often do, and often don?t.

 

In my series from Guatemala, there is one picture called ?Mild human steel chain?, where I do the opposite, rather flat light all over, a bit de-saturation, so the picture is a bit chaotic, there is no ?beautiful?, overdramatic viewpoint in it, but it tells the ?truth? of the scenery, but is not eye catching which the scenery indeed were for me. I don?t think that I will get many high ratings on aesthetic or many viewings, and the reason for it is that people view pictures from different point of view, cultural background and so on.

 

But it is my point of view, not always but now, because the only constant ting for me I change.

 

Yours

Gunnar Hansen

 

 

Lighting does not look natural to me at all - it's kind of painful for my eyes. Subject is good and strong - but I like these kinds of photo in a perspective - rather than trying too hard to bring a studio-feel. That's my personal taste - thanks