single photos Summer portrait

I can't take the uniformity of reaction that this picture evokes. "I sort of remember that I loved her that summer." It's like the visual counterpart to Chicago's "Colour My World" or some other nauseating rock ballad.

I think I get it that there are different styles of photographs, and they have their own set of aesthetics. I just think that this picture is relatively ordinary.

p.s. Not that all Chicago is bad. Show me a picture that evokes "Make Me Smile," and it's probably a pretty good one.

There are indeed other styles, and we are all going to have our preferences. I like the romantic treatment, and I see this as a photo of someone who surely was very special to the photographer.

I am not trying to demean your photography by comparison, Martin, but people do value different things and bring different visions and emotoins to the "girl on the beach" genre, if we may speak of such:

link

I actually like your photography, Martin, but it is clear that we are talking different styles here. I personally like the romanticism of the Photo of the Week, but I also like the down to earth realism of your own shot, with the water swirling around the woman's ankles. They simply remind me of differing beach experiences. I say all this while knowing, of course, that we do not even know for sure that the Photo of the Week was actually shot on the beach.

I do not see a uniformity of comments so much as two very opposing views tending to be expressed.

--Lannie

I'm not sure why you're perceiving uniformity of reaction. I certainly haven't said a word about a "beautiful" girl, which is not what I see. I haven't even said a word about summertime, which is way more literal a reaction than I usually have to a photo. And I haven't said anything about it evoking love and being about some kind of young summer love, which it's not to me. I didn't see seventies in it, though I understand why others might. As a matter of fact, my reaction was pretty simple and mostly visual and visceral, non-interpretive and non-representational. I spent my summers on Rockaway Beach in NY. It looked NOTHING like this. To me, it's an expressive use of color and technique . . . which doesn't necessarily translate to a meaning.

It's true, Fred, that your response does not fit into the generalization that I made. But many others do. Whereas some see intimacy, I see one of the girls in the beer commercial who is having the good time you will be having too if you just buy the beer (I find this to be even more the case in the other picture that Alberta linked to, which in my haste I took to be from a stock photo site).

Jeez, if someone's going to post a picture of mine as an example, at least use a toned one, with both blown-out highlights and dark splotches (you see, it's got it all). In my defense, I gave away the good copy of this picture long ago, and I pulled this from one of many reject stacks: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=13384492&size=lg

I don't think I'm completely off the mark when I generalize the uniformity of reaction to this picture. See the quotes below, which I extracted from the comments:

“it gives the air of a summer portrait. Summer, that short time in which many of us rush to get in as much of, before it is gone . . .”

“Summer breeze. Girl on the beach. . .”

“I look at it and say ‘I've been there, I've seen her, and it make me feel good’ . . .”

“A quick flash of a moment in life long ago that is now just a buried fragment of thought, grown dim and dirty in the clutter of memory and time, of a girl I once loved. . .”

“The photo powerfully take me to the past, a past full of unraveled memories . . .”

I grew up on the southern California beaches, in the Los Angeles area, and so this is an image that does relate to me in that way but it could easily be also from the mountains or deserts where i spent a lot of time as well--essentially many years in the sun and elements.

Martin, you talk about stock imagery as if it is a pejorative. Evoking a mood is something an image should do and the best commercial photography tries to do the same thing. Whether this was shot for stock, has ever been stock or whatever is really irrelevant to me, it just has a very fresh feeling to it that I like. So many of the images we see in the POW feel so intense and over produced, I like the freedom here.

Fred did an excellent job explaining the relative merits of my comments in that former POW, but there are also technical issues that were involved with that former comment regarding blown highlights. If you remember, I showed an example of visual reversal which is not attractive in some cases where there are blown out areas, something I saw in that image. The printing comment has much to do with the creation of hard edges-banding- as well as gloss differential if printed with ink--offset or desktop printer. Most care less about the latter while the former, the abrupt edges can be more distracting. It isn't something that happens in all cases but can be an issue in many.

With black, there is no gloss differential and only in very rare cases do you get odd edges on these regions-I did see it a lot in the early years of digital printing, but not so much with modern printers and advanced methods of working images. But certainly you can if you really torque the contrast but in an image like this, with a good printer (machine and person), I think you could get a very good print without issue.

Martin, to be fair, you'd also have to quote the similarity of reactions criticizing this photo.

Reactions to a photo, in themselves, don't say much to me about the photo itself. I usually expect similarity of reaction. That's why the top-rated photos generally all look alike. One person hears what another says and it leads them to go there themselves. Voila. Similarity of reaction. Seems like human nature.

Then again, photography also uses symbols, signs, and signifiers, as does all art. There are universal aspects of visual renderings. Similarity of reaction often makes perfect sense.

Read the reactions to the great art and photography of the world, from the Mona Lisa to the Napalm Girl. This photo, of course, approaches neither of those two in quality or effect. But a similarity of reaction does not suggest a photo is stock or is somehow lacking.

I see I'm not making any headway here.

I tell you what. I will bump this picture up from Chicago's "Colour My World," which I find loathsome, to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," which I would like, if other people just didn't like it so damn much.

Stasys's picture is OK, just not that great, in my opinion. I'm not have any problem grappling with the toning and the scratches and the imperfections, but I think that's 90 percent of what it's got. If you print it as an ordinary B&W picture, what's left?

Fred, I took a quick look at the pictures you linked to. I like Nan Goldin's picture of the woman sitting alone at a table while a bust of a man overhead seems to be grinning.

Martin, why do you keep coming back to assuming that anyone here wants you to like this picture? That seems not to be in keeping with the spirit of this discussion. I certainly don't love the photo, though I saw passion in it and appreciate it. We have moved far beyond whether or not you like it. Frankly, I really don't care whether you like it or not. We've discussed how different technique is appropriate in different styles and genres of photograph. We've discussed how reactions can be similar for a wide array of reasons. We've discussed the role a photographer plays in emphasizing cheekbones. None of that has anything to do with anyone wanting you to alter whether or not you like the photo and how you would label it. Please stop reducing a more in-depth discussion of various issues concerning photographs to a taste battle. That's not what this is about at all. Again, we've all moved way beyond whether or not you like this photo. Perhaps you should as well.

Maybe that is the problem Martin, you keep wanting to make it something it isn't. Why does it have to hold up when you change it? If it wasn't presented that way, downloading it--like the Curtis I posted above--and changing it isn't looking at it as it is presented.

I spend a great deal of time making my images look as they do when I post/print them. It would be a crime for someone to take one and change it and then say--Oh, that isn't so good!--don't you think? We need to look at what is presented not how we might change it or if it holds up to "other" treatments, and then make our evaluation. You don't have to like anything, but look at what was presented not something else to make that decision.

It's like judging a cupcake by taking a bite of the frosting and then a bite of the cake. Sometimes you find out a lot about reliant the frosting is on the butter content and how it hides how dry the cake is.

I just think this picture is more artsy, than art: 75 percent toning that anyone can apply, and 25 percent picture that not everyone could take.

Martin, it's many of the things you've said that have nothing to do with whether or not you like it that are being challenged here, and you're mistaking that for us wanting you to like it.

You've compared the burned highlights of a previous traditional photo to the black areas here and we've challenged that. I can completely understand someone not liking the look of this photo, the style that would blacken details, that would exaggerate shadow like this. What I couldn't understand was comparing the burned out highlights in that other photo to the technique in this photo.

I can completely understand someone not liking this color palette. Color is a very subjective thing. But talking about as if it were a mistake misses the point. This is what the photographer wanted it to look like. You just don't like it.

Your discussing the similarity of reaction to this as if that somehow made it a stock photo or somehow lessened its aesthetic qualities was worth challenging, not because I think you should like it but because I think you should recognize that lots of great art garners a similarity of reaction and that's not a strike against something.

Each time, you interpret our challenges as wanting you to like this or as challenges to your taste. They are not. They are challenges to the photographic ideas you are putting forth. This is a perfect photo not to like. It's many of the other things you've said that are questionable.

For me, the color and toning here is important and effective, but secondary.

The first quality I noticed was the looseness of the photo, the vacillating movement of the hair against the strong, stark directional gaze of the woman. The contrast of light and dark. That ENERGY drew me in. It would be there in black and white just as it is in color.

Color is not an add-on to a default black and white picture. Color is not frosting any more than converting a color scene to black and white is a way of frosting what's really there. Color is part of a photo and part of the expressive arsenal of a photographer, just as is black and white.

One can dwell on the color but there's more to this photo than color.

I'm kind of ambivalent on whether or not I like the color palette here. But I do appreciate it because, for me, the use of color suggests the same kind of abandonment on the part of the photographer that I see in the wind-blown expression of the woman. Like I said, I sense the passion of the photographer being in tune with the passion of the subject. Whether I like individual elements is less important to me.

I think I usually approach a picture by looking at until I come to a reasonably clear conclusion about whether I like it or not, then I might analyze what factors went into forming this conclusion. Maybe other people do this in the opposite order, or just analyze the picture without forming a conclusion about whether they like it or not.

In this case, I think Fred misjudges my low-brow goals ever so slightly. It's not that I think that everyone wants me to like the picture (did I state that correctly?); it's that I want everyone to not like the picture quite as much as they do (yes, equally bad, I know).

Do I misjudge stock pictures? Aren't they usually the lowest common denominator of competence? A few school kids and a teacher in a classroom; one flower in a field, etc. Meant most of all not to disturb the status quo. Which is not to say that someone who can take a good stock picture can't take other, more interesting types of pictures too.

Well, I see a very manipulated type of expressiveness in this photo. The deja vu I get from it is of walking around in a Gap store and seeing a picture like this on a wall over a rack of clothes that I'm supposed to want to buy. So, this keeps me from buying into the picture very deeply.

I don't see it deeply and I have no investment in having others like it or not.

It's nicely superficial for me. It's visual. It's not philosophical, deep, or meaningful to me.

Martin, low-brow or high-brow are your judgments, not mine.

“I see passion in this . . . The technique is from the gut.”
 
"It's nicely superficial for me."
 
Fred, based on your first comment, I would have thought that you found the picture to be more than superficially likable.
 
 

The comments here dont reflect the photos strengths and weaknesses they seem to be of a more ego-centric nature.

Martin, I was using superficial in terms of its visual effect on me. As I have already said, I don't get deep meaning from it. I see passion, not meaning.

Richard Avedon said: "My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues."

That's what I have in mind when I say it's nicely superficial as opposed to philosophical or deep. I think surfaces and, therefore, the superficial, are very significant to photographs. They are often a matter of what I see as opposed to what I think.

Thank you for the clarification, Fred; the distinction you make is very interesting. I get something other than passion from this picture, but that's a matter of my personal reaction to it, I guess.

An eyeless portrait...? Why not...? And yet so far... If the eyes are the window to the soul, it will take a lot to give any soul to an eyeless portrait. But what do we get to chew in this one...? Hair... I'm not sure that's enough, although it ain't a plain "nothing" either... What would this picture be worth in black and white ? Less would not be more in this case... Is that a good sign ? I would say no... Lots of pictures that are a bit empty could be turned into something intriguing or "different", but that wouldn't make them good pictures, in my opinion. And I'm affraid this may be one of them - although I admit it colors, movement of the hair etc aren't completely uinteresting... Falls a bit short, perhaps in the second - third ? - class basket, but it wasn't uninteresting, and the discussion was great. Regards.

Though I do not consider myself to be in the caliber of the 4 or 5 of you going at it textually, I do have another observation I wish to throw out there. If this was to be a portrait of Cecilia, Mary, or Donna, I might be less than thrilled. However, the woman is to be the embodiment of summer, at least by title. The woman's anonymity created by the "black holes for eyes", hole for a mouth, and dehumanizing coloration in a yellowish sepia, leaves room for our imagination to grow. We as the observer are permitted to fill in the voids however we wish: Are her eyes blue, is her skin olive, does she have a little chip out of her upper left incisor? We are, in effect, permitted to personalize the this image. That is why, I believe, it works for me, and the remaining 50 - 60% of us in the "pro" camp. This is also why I agree with, and can visualize, its usage in stock: as a Beach Boy's album cover, hanging as decorative art in a retail establishment, or as a print hanging in the Study, reminding one of a day that is physically lost to them. All of these are "good" reasons to create such a work. Will it ever appeal to all... Not likely. Differences in expectation, depth of imagination, and prejustices in style, will likely always rally against this type of work. But then again, I believe, there is rarely any work that has such great mass appeal as to garner greater than 75 - 80% acceptance anyway. Good luck to you Stasys, I will continue to enjoy this piece, thank you for sharing.

-Dave