When there´s no horizon [Quando não há horizonte]

While I do like the subtle composition here - and the way everything fills the frame - my enjoyment of this image is lessened by its being so small.

Parabens pela foto,Flavio.Muito bem tirada,e mostra muito bem um pedaco do Sampa que tanto conhecemos e admiramos.Gosto muito da geometria dos predios,e das tonalidades em preto e branco que aparecem nesta foto.Muitos detalhes.Uma foto um pouquinho maior,ajudaria a ver melhor.

Saudades do meu Brasil.Congrats on POW.

With so many things going on this is really quite interesting. Unfortunately it's so small that I can't really absorb it all. However it does have a worn down old city feel and conveys it well. I think the tones are somewhat compressed, avoiding having many complete blacks (on my screen which is fairly accurate) which actually works here and would sometimes be overlooked.

 

If it were bigger I'm sure I could nitpick more. Hope you survive the week. ;^)

The lighting troughout the image is very good and the composition too but one might ask what the photographer actually wanted to show us? Is it like the editors say, the density? There's no title above the image, there's no title on the frame... I like the good use of black and white but I'm missing some elements here. I think, it is not finished yet, but I like it so far!

Less than 46% of the area available for "image" is actually content - the rest is white space and black borders. Bit like looking at someone's carefully shot, beautifully lit 10x8 from down the hall. Might be a great picture, but can't see really, sorry.

To echo previous comments, yo I want to dive in but cannot quite manage to, give us a bigger version say 600 by x, I do like this picture though, it looks like a miniature world even though it is of an area that must be huge in real life. I love spaces.... our little lives. thank you.

The photo does convey in a simple yet strong way the message of a city turning into a "concreate jungle" and a resident feeling like a small cocoon surrounded by these sky scrapers.

 

However I am not sure if it does anything to cheers us up in terms of originality or asthetics or it adds a new dimension to the way the mood of a city/megapolis can be captured.

 

A simple photo of a Bombay slum thriving by the side of a skyscraper would convey more meaning.

 

The editors have given a strong emphasis on the grain of the photo as a deciding factor but to me it fails to impress.

 

Regards

Rohit

 

 

 

 

I don´t know if maybe because this scene is so comum to me, but I really don´t understand why it´s POW.

 

The picture is part of a portfolio titled "The impossibility of a free sight",

and this perhaps explains the meaning of the photo - the sense of congestion

induced by urban landscapes such as this. This said, I guess that the photo

was selected mainly for the technical rendition of the subject, i.e. the cited

high grain and contrast - but I it's very difficult to appreciate it since

the picture is so small (also in the "large" version). The subject per se is

- unfortunately! - quite common in our large towns... For me this is the most

puzzling POW selection since I've joined the community...

It is a strange choice for POW. May be it is better looking on big scale... My eye don't want to go to horizont and every time it is going down to dark roof in the center/down of photo. Tall building on the left is not parallel to the frame. Blindly dark windows and no detailed walls realy make it even worse. There is a very low (at least on my screen) aestheticism and poor thechnical details. No rating. IMHO.

I also have to complain this is too small as posted. The first thing I did was click on the "large" link, hoping that would help, but it didn't. I think I'll really like the dodged & burned, gritty, grainy character of this shot, but it is tough to tell at this size. The composition looks nice, though.

I have to second Mani on this one. I don't get it. There is nothing in this photo that grounds your eye, you just wander in and out of the frame. For a landscape that is supposed to be 3-dimensional, this looks very flat. Flavio has other great shots that would have been a much better contender for POW. I just don't see this as a good choice.

I think this is a fantastic picture; I think the chaotic arrangement of smaller buildings in the foreground contrasts beautifully with the order of the high-rises. The texture and tones of the photo convey a gritty mood, which leaves me feeling much more uneasy than pictures of North-American or European metropolises do. I do wish it was larger, though, and i also find the convergence of the frame with the leftmost building a little distracting.

Wonderful collection of angles and assorted heights without the symmetry you would find in other cities like NYC. The patterns in the buildings as well as their facades are pleasing to my eye and the lighting is fantastic.. Looks like a quiet morning on a sleeping city. I find it interesting and unique as it doesn't include the sky -- Good choice I think. I'm sure if it were larger I would find more detail in the lower portion - in the streets and agree it is a shame it isn't able to be viewed larger. I must say when I first saw it it didn't strike me as much as when I looked at it for a while. It kind of grows on me.

At first I also thought this was too small, but after looking more carefully, I realized it would look the same no matter how large the image. Definitely a contrasty black and white, but can't tell too much about grain at this size. For every poor person who cannot leave this depressing congestion, there are ten who don't want to give up the money they make in the city.

This is really great, and should be studied for a long time before commented on (preferably in Large size, though...)

 

What is great is its chaotic nature, whilst still being made up of very regular straight lines and squares. Everything is packed so tightly together, it looks more like a theater set than a real city. Also, the buildings have been perfectly arranged to give us a circle, with the large buildings in back, the smaller ones in front getting smaller towards the middle (like a group photo of people).

 

The buildings dont look large they look small enough to step over. Yet at the same time, since all we can see are the buildings, we feel that we are trapped within this city, unable to escape it.

 

It would be nice if the photographer would post a larger version of this photo, so that we could really absorb the image.

 

I´ve just uploaded a larger version. Thanks for commenting.

Very Sao Paulo, I can say.

I live there...

Clicio

b&w timeless as always

This is a photo with lot of detail on it. So I keep wanting to see more. It's too small. A brazilian again??? Next week may be me! :-)

Contrary to an earlier comment I find that the frame is an important element in the composition and it enhences the density of the subject.

As it is said by the elfs this a very often done picture, probabbly most of us have tried it many times, in this case the result is outstanding.

Deciding on the focal length and the "exact" framing it's no triviality.

Once again excuse my english and salutations from Barcelona.

I really love this picture. Well, I don´t like what I see but I like this picture. Sometimes the ugly looks beautiful and gives strong images. Remember the burning oil fields with the firefighters? Or the pictures of the goldmine in Brasil.

Great shot!

 

Joachim

http://www.joachimgerstl.com

This is once again a nice example of the kind of passion brazilian photographers nurture in depicting scenes of dayly life. This particular photo brings back to me the same sense of owe of my first encounter with the big city, where I lived for nearly six years. It is a reasonably accurate rendition of what I can remember, which is what I could see through my window for a long time. Although my life back there wasn't always a life at all, I do miss it so much! In this sense, for bringing back powerful memories, this picture and the others in Flávio's portfolio certainly do work very well for me. I would probably appreciate them even more if they were a little bit bigger. Flávio, congratulations on your POW and on your very nice portfolio.

Now that I've seen the larger version... I like it as an abstract composition. it's a composition made almost entirely of black & grey rectangles. Recalls Braque and early Jackson Pollock for me in a vague way. People who are straining to see a literal "meaning" need to relax a bit. Didn't the art world get over asking what abstracts "meant" in about 1930? Yes, it's also a portrait of a city, in the same way that Brandt's contorted abstract nudes were portraits of women (or Pollock's "Broadway Boogie-Woogie" depicts NY) but I find it to more of an impressionist work inspired by any big city.

A primeira coisa: a gente e carioca de coracao.

Afterwards, what can I say, I travel to Brazil on a monthly basis, both to SP and to RJ. This urban landscape could be found anywhere in the world: in SP, in Mexico DF, in Hong Kong... there is nothing that really says Sao Paulo here.