Meditation in Vezelay (Yonne)

Excellent shot. The position of the man sitting down is parallel to the one of the man on the engraved scene. In that scene, knowledge seems more attainable. Great use of light and mood capture.

Perfect light & shadow play, best balance between dark & bright, crisp details, nice composition, My friend, another excellent capture in B/W!!! Best regards

... Richard, appreciate your kind words again. The struggle in this shot was to balance the light and dark and frankly it took quite a few tries do do so.

 

... Adan, damn, fella, but you see everything. Here is it 2:30 in the a.m., thought I'd just check out the old portfolio, and sure enough, Adan! What I appreciate more than I can say, and why I love seeing your commentaries, whether on my shots or John Crosley's (where you post so often) or wherever I see your reactions to shots, is that you really make an effort to SEE the shot. It's not the superficial response. I think the first time I consciously became aware of that is about a year ago when I commented on a stained glass shot of yours. When I did so, I had misunderstood the shot completely ... thought that the geometric shapes were from the inside when they were actually outside the windows. The mistake is because I THOUGHT that I understood, but I didn't really SEE. You don't miss those things, just like you didn't miss the detail of the man in the carving. Thanks again, Adan. ... And thanks for the snack:)

Dedication.Feelings.Technical expertise.Lust of sharing:Dennis!

I'm sure long winter nights have a lot to offer.

Hopefully,it's 11.30 am. here,and a blue sky on a very bright sunny day is inviting for a day out!

Best regards.

Interesting : for some reasons, I completely missed this one !

I really love the repetition of the gentleman sitting, but as a king, it looks like, on the bas-relief. Botth of them now seeing the light ( But still one a bit more than the other one. )

 

... posted it yesterday. Thanks for the kind words. This was really a distinguished old gentleman, who sat there quietly in meditation for an hour or so.

Ah thanks for the precision. And yes the whole phot is extremely noble and distinguished. This is so well rendered here. When I said about different levels of lights, it wasn;t any kind of judgement or anything, but just the constatation that, as human beeing we'll always be a bit more in the shadow than what we are longing for ( And th ebas relief for me, is an alegory of this goal )

 

... from your words, Laurent. You are very kind to give the attention to the shots and your thoughts about it. To me, the light is everything, of course, as it is to all of us who rely on it to capture our shots. The light was a real problem in the original, because the bas-relief on the lectern was actually almost blown out. Too highlighted. By working with the image in Lightroom, though, I was able to get the proper balance without losing details in the shadow.

 

As for us being in the shadow more than we would like to be, I guess we all feel like that, which is probably a good thing. It keeps us from the sin of certainty. That is why I prefer the idea of faith, where one acknowledges that one cannot ever know, cannot ever be certain, but believe anyway. There has to be doubt for faith to exist. Where there is no doubt, there is either ignorance or certainty. Of the two, I fear the second more ... in my opinion, certainty leads to fanaticism.

Dennis, it is I who is thankful, especially for such flattering comments coming from someone of your caliber. I possess no background nor training in photography, and at times I feel hesitant to comment too much due to lack of credibility. You are one of the very few people that I feel at ease commenting, perhaps because I see something in your pictures that I also try to attain through my amateurish work. As a young kid I used to seek the solace of churches. Thanks for giving me inspiration and "tickling" my eyes.

I totaly agree with you about certainty in faith. Now, just wondering about the technical part of your photo : we can see the work you did to lower the lightest parts. I'm curious : did you ever tried HDR with people, if they are not consiously posing ?

... I haven't yet, but there is a technique I'm going to try using the RAW images. I am going to "develop" at different exposures and try an HDR. I'll post that result here if you'd like. There is a camera that takes the mulitple exposures with a single shot (Fuji F5). Here's a link the Ned Horn's site where he does an HDR in Boston using this technique.

thank you very much for the information.

Dennis, would you like to see MY LATEST?

Very interesting. Unfortunately, Ned Horn is not answering your question concerning the man :-)

I've got a multiple exposure on my little camera, but it's only 3 exposures, and 1 stop down one stop up. And it's jpg ! All this really letting me sceptical, so I haven't tried it yet. But actually, there may be lots of way to have fun with that, having a very still set, and people moving. But time to experiment is not something I have much these days. I'll let you know when and especially if something comes out of it

Perfect light and shadows. So nice framing Denni.

What I like about this scene is that it is roughly halved into two areas of shadow and light. The man sits in shadow looking forward into the light. The light reaches back into the shadows and illuminates him. If the other chairs were filled, the scene would fall flat. This is a man alone with his thoughts. Alone in prayer. Alone in his search with glimmers of light.

A peaceful image!

Dear Dennis,

 

this is a very peaceful scenery and a real meditation that someone can have in a church.

 

P.S.

Thank you for your wonderful words about my Calendar Project, as it turned out well, but I have to tell you that I did not do the design. I just did the photographs that can be still recognized :) the rest - colors, design, outlines were made by a professional designer group "Skart" from Belgrade. and I love their design of the Calendar :)

 

For now, I have a kind of block in my photography, I am waiting for my inspiration, and plus, I am not anymore a suscribed member and have less benefits :( but I will try to pay it, but I dont know how :(

 

Well my dear Dennis, I wish you a great rest of the day, and be well my Friend :)

 

Biliana

... you with a block, Biliana. You just seem to have images flow out constantly. Anyway, my best wishes are with you. As far as your subscription ... something will work out, I'm sure.

Here's a picture that cries out for film.

 

Until you can get a 10 stop HDR image in digital with a single take (that's coming, of course) only B&W film could get both the shadow and highlight details you need here.

... welcome. Hope your trip was all you planned. Thanks for the comment on this, but I'm afraid there's no way I'm going back to film again. (Sigh) But I am going to upgrade my camera soon, and that may help as well :) Sorry we missed you over the new year, had a nice time meeting and talking to Jeff Long at the Lenox. He's quite a guy. Next time!

Je n`ai qu`un petit mot pour toi mon cher Dennis, mais qui vient d`un grand coeur - "Merci" : ) infiniment :)

 

I have only one little word for you my dear Dennis, but it comes from a big heart - "Thank YOU" : ))

 

Biliana

If I may and if I understand well what happened, this is what this particular photo is all about, and shows its power and true significance,

... thanks for the words of praise for the photograph as well.

Dear Laurent ;)

 

and a big smile for YOU :)

 

Biliana