BLACK & WHITE

Great photo. The black background and black dishes are perfect, the ligth is perfect

 

 

You might think me a sucker for simplicity but I do think real beauty comes from those kinds of images. Here we have crisp cut lines of geometry, contrasting tonal structure. What could be more gratifying? I ask you and I ask anyone.

Nicely done! I hope my dinning room table with bowl works out as well.

I love the contrasts in this still life: The texture of the garlic versus the smooth pottery; the symmetry of the man produced items versus the organic bulbs of garlic; the dark and light images; the three-dimensional aspect of the garlic versus the two-dimensional aspect of the pottery. The single garlic bulb seems to be floating and in my opinion needs to be anchored to the table with a shadow. Beautiful, enjoable picture.

Wonderful composition and "color". Excellent.

 

I add my complements to all the others here. Great lighting, perfect exposure, beautiful composition of a peaceful scene.

It is almost monochrome and that works wonderfully with the soft lighting. The subtle colors

are excellent...it gives me a feeling of peace, although I couldn't possibly explain why. Thank

you for this fine posting.

In addition to my previous statement......This photo is clearly the work of 2 different photos!!!

 

Example:

"Antiseptic", yes... in a way... very clean, very dry, very cold still life... BUT I think there's a public for that too. And... the composition is book-perfect - "too" perfect, some might say... To me, this is not a piece of art that grabs me, it doesn't induce an emotion in me, but I like it. I like it because it's very well done...

 

Most people in this thread have been talking about the "light" & the details both in the shadows and highlights... I'm not sure "light" is a proper word here: perhaps the photographer will tell us more about this...? It seems to me, no digital sensor would capture details this well in both extremes of the range. So, I think what we are looking at here is the result of this fairly new technology called "HDR", and which allows us to combine almost automatically 1) the best details in the shadows, that appear in an over-exposed frame, and 2) the best details in the highlights, that appear in another under-exposed frame - of course both frames being taken with the exact same position of the camera - set on a tripod. So, no big deal about the light itself: it's clean and produced by a montage, and that's all there is to say about it - or am I mistaken about something...? For great lighting indeed, we'l have to look at Dutsch paintings - or for contemporary photographic lighting, at still lifes by Aaron Jones and some recent New York artists, or at light painting for example... all I'm saying is: there is nothing particularly impressive here under that chapter, except HDR technology or montage techniques of a kind or another...

 

Most interesting for me remains 1) the composition, and... 2) the items selected to appear in the composition - which I find all great, in fact. And the idea of having a play between bright and dark is very good too: it isn't all that new, but still very nicely implemented.

 

So, it's a nice shot. Not a memorable one, but at least much cleaner technically and generally better than 90% of the still life posted on photo.net. A commandable effort that could lead to an interesting discussion about HDR, about the new possibilities devopped with new technologies, and about cold art from a strictly artistic point of view. Best regards.

To Mike C: I'm not sure where to look at the selection line you are refering to. Could you clarify please ? Where is it...? Regards.

Based on the angle at which the shadow is shown behind the garlic in the bowl, he would

have needed a light to be coming at it from the right hand side...... and there clearly is no

light from that direction because the bowl that is holding the garlic is dark on that side which

leads me to my conclusion that this photo is entirely false. Not to mention that all of this

points out that he most likely just photographed a 'midrange tone' set of pottery and

darkened it in photoshop to seem as if he had actually shot a photo of dark plates.

 

Lesson learned here: Work on your photoshop skills a little more.

Marc G. when magnified, there is a very visible dark line outlining the garlic. Here is a

photo of it where it has been lifted off. hope this explains better.

The intense formality of this composition immediately made me think "large format", so I was surprised to find this was done on a DSLR. And not even one of the most recent batch, with their improved dynamic range.

 

So I think it succeeds very well on a technical level. The lighting is beautiful and subtle, and (at least at the reduced resolution for web viewing) it looks very convincingly like a high-quality 4x5 still life. You should be richly commended for that.

 

That being said, the content does nothing for me. It feels very detached and intellectual, and mostly makes me wonder if the whole thing is meant to be some thought exercise that makes you ask "What is 'Black' or 'White', really?"

 

Titling it "Black & White" when the main subjects are more of an ivory-tinged off-white and slightly-bluish-grey...it's not entirely unprovocative, but it hits me with a dull thump. A thump too light to really wake me up.

Clean, precise, sterile.

To me the separate garlic doesn't look as a fake, neither the plates looks artificially painted in Photoshop. It surely represents the element of fire - dry, hot, antiseptic. The picture is not at all "cold". To me it is very natural.

The Picture is very interesting and eye catching.It has perfect shades or tones of black and then in contrast white color of Garlic makes good single contrast and hence makes it more apealing.Rakesh Ji,its great work,keep it up.

I believe it's a fine work by Rakesh.The matte black surface of the dishes that reduces the reflection demands strong light or very slow speed but it's quite possible to overexpose the garlics.But nothing like this happened.Very attentive metering, i suppose multiple meterings and the result is an excellent exposure.Regards

Congrats on the POW Rakesh! it's great as it is...if you want me to be picky, I'll just say that you could have added some salt or some other white substance in the bowl, but I'm also sure that the resulting image will at best be as good as this one :) Keep up the good work!

It is a very "clean" picture but extremely predictable. I see no emotion in it, no sophistication, or story. I mean, what really makes a good photo?

This is an image I wish I had taken. It's not that easy to capture detail in the extreme lights and darks as Rakesh has done. It's an exquisite beautiful image, in my mind.

 

The only change I might make would be to remove the lower garlic. Aside from its imperfections mentioned already, it distracts from the superb composition. It doesn't add anything, and it takes away from the perfection of the main subject garlics.

 

But that said, it's an example of perfect lighting and detail. Well done!

I see the dark selection line that Mike refers to above. I had to download the image and bring it into Photoshop. Using a new layer to raise the gamma level to 2.49 makes it really obvious that the garlic in the bowl, as well as the one on the table, had something done to them. Maybe they were cut and pasted, maybe they were just selected for some routine level adjustments. But something smells pretty strong in that area. It would help if the photographer would comment on this.

 

Nevertheless, I still like this image. It may not exhibit perfect Photoshop skills but it isn't too bad. One may make the statement that there is simply nothing so bad as something that is just not too bad, but overall, I think the photographer made a good effort in this. After all, he did not say that it was unmanipulated.

 

I would tend to agree with the comments alluding to the sterility of the image. While I find it pleasing to look at, it does not excite me too much. It does serve well for discussion, which is all that it was supposed to do as a POW. Regards

I agree with shots of stills being difficult. There's a need to capture the story behind photos at times, and I would see how that is a challenge with stills. I really like this photo and it's captures my attention and involves me in the mystery. Nice work!

Thank you so much all for your words of critque, they mean a lot to me. This is neither a cut paste job nor a composite of two images, only the garlic is burned a bit in PS. The pottery is painted matt black with black board paint. Light source is a large window. Meter reading is the average of the black of pottery and white of garlics. I am posting herewith the original untouched and cropped image.

 

With warm regards,

Rakesh

I am thankful you posted your original image file. Though by itself it is a good photograph, clearly, I can appreciate why you felt that it needed some modification. The end result is more refined and indeed a stronger image.

 

I myself have been excited after making what I thought was a great photograph and hurried the image along so that I could post it on the site, and sometimes I have been a little careless in my technique. We have to remember that the POW selection is not necessarily made from the best that a photographer has to offer (though this one is pretty good). The Elves select what they feel will be best for discussions, and they made a right selection in this case. Regards.

I'm shocked that you got that with a natural light source, a window. Nice job!

If I examine this photo very closely and for a long time I may be able to find something that would please me if I had done it differently. However, I find that this photo is an exemplary piece of work. Congratulations on being the picture of the day. It deserves all of the praise that it receives.