Persephone and Demeter

You are a consistently impressive photographer... with great range. Your x3 images on your front page attest to that. (anarchy, this one, and the 4legs umbrella) - all done with your pocket camera.

 

You have mastered the pocket camera and obviously beyond. You are bringing so much depth to the table. Experience and natural ability are apparent throughout you work.

The point and shoot - pocket camera has mislead me, my mistake. Too often i heard the words 'pocket camera' while i was viewing your photos.

Your photos stand well outside the limitations imposed by a camera label. This is not a suggestion to remove the label, just an observation. I was intrigued by it at first, as a photographer who will use any camera i can get my hands on and dedicate myself to it. To explore. To work with limitations and try to rise above compromise or even along side it.

I had been visiting your portfolio for a long time before i realized that i was limiting my experience of your work by allowing the label 'pocket camera' to have too much power. My mistake, but it can be a powerful label. It was akin to allowing a caption or title to nudge me. I was seeing the excellence of your images but at the same time i was imposing a barrier. I was thoroughly impressed that you were doing these photos with a pocket camera but i then forgot to completely let it go of that fact. When i did forget about you using a pocket camera i was even more taken by your eye.

 

btw, this photo is a very fine example of turning the limitations of equipment to possibilities of expression. It stands alone of course but also uses the characteristics of the camera to advantage. Raw and refined in one breath. An unpolished timeless and grounded story. I love it.

The play of backlight and shadows, the inside /outside surrounding, the semi blurred , semi accentuated details are creating a very interesting and beautiful composition, There is enough details to get the story, or create a viewer personal story. It is well observed and creative, IMO the kind of camera used is secondary, the eye and creativity are the essential parameters, and you have them ! ...;-)) really enjoyed exploring it.

Thank you for your time and for your comments

at first i was a little disturbed by the caption -- the mother as Demeter is fine but any child to go through hell as Persephone did... ...then i looked at the photograph with your pov, hugging the ground, looking up, mother and daughter seen in a blur against the glare of the sky, and the lush exuberant vegetation... ...a sensitive tribute to the fairer sex... wonderful work

Thank you very much for your comments, especially on this particular photo.

Josh

Thank you very much for your support. You made think a lot with your comment, and I now removed the "little pocket camera" bit from the profile. It will still appear under "equipment" below the photos, but it isn't as important anymore.

I did stress the point of the pocket camera when I started here on PN a couple of years ago, after almost two decades without shooting stills.Now I did stress that fact for a few conscious reasons :

The first one being that in my opinion, too many photographers rely exclusively on technology, but don't have any idea about composition, even less about content or expression. And the only way they think a photo is a good photo is when it is " crisp and sharp" !

But mostly the intention was also to show that even a pocket camera IS technology, and we need time to understand how to use it as well ( if not even better ) than much more powerfull cameras. I'm still learning how to handle this particular camera, after thousands of photos taken. And I can only now see a bit of a progress.

And then, what is probably more important for me, is to break the rules : that is the only way we can really express ourselves in a personal way.

But how can we break the rules, if we don't know those rules first ? I believe that the attitude of " I don't want to learn the "classical rules/ the classical artists/photographers in order to express myself freely" is completely wrong and even dangerous : because working this way, we'll always make a piece which has been already done before, but at the same time we'll have the illusion that we just achieve something very new and original, and worst : something good...

 

Your post made me realise there was a part of vanity involved in my way of presenting the photographs : as knowing that when some of my photos happen to be good photos, but done with all the limitations of the camera used, it sometimes gives me the illusion that I could get more pride in the final photo than i would with another camera, which is absurd...

I also had in the first few weeks/months of joining PN quite violent negative reactions on some photos, for the simple fact of me using the camera I'm using, so there was a part of porvocation involved as well when mentioning the gear...

It also gives me the opportunity to have an excuse when the photo is not as good as I would, which is another absurdity : As we don't compare for example an oil painting with a water color painting : the tools are just differents.

A bad photo is a bad photo, and there is no "Imagine how nice that could have been if ... "

So I thank you very much for you comment, as I came to realise that I was doing exactly the same as you : Too often i heard the words 'pocket camera' while i was shooting and presenting my photos, and it was actually my mistake to allow the label 'pocket camera' to have too much power

 

Pnina

I was interested by the scene, here and by the light which was the worst possible for a photo, but the best possible for lighting this particular scene. I saw that my nly chance here was to work on the composition and the timing, the trick being to prepar it intellectually before getting the camera on, in order for Mother and Daughter not to see me, and then let le yougn lady discover me, and having her mother naturally look at her rather than me. And I had to get the focus on the surroundings, because it was late afternoon, and even with the maximum two stops up, I had to use a very slow shutter speed, But that actually was the effect I wanted to achieve, and I have to say that I was quite happy to see the result was very close to the intention.

 

Rajat

Thank you for the comment : Well, the title is a little provocative, but for me the relation between mother and daughter in the mythology is more intersting than the signification of the place where Persephone was taken when abducted. But this is also one of the first representations of the seasons, and the four months spent in the underworld by Persephone are the only condition of getting the life to start again a new cycle, and that was I really thought when I saw them in front of the "exuberant vegetation" as you noticed.

 

( and if you knew the little lady on the photo, you would know that Hell is probably the place she is coming from ;-) )

nicely put, and resolved by making the camera secondary but notable.

you are a class act Laurent.

I came just to read again the long text I remembered having written, but too quickly with the idea of editing it a little bit.

I edited what I saw ( which probably leaves a lot tobe corrected ), and then discovered your very kind words.

Thank you very much for that.

I was trying to figure out something funny to finish this answer, but as it was certainly a way of trying to avoid compliments which are still always difficult for me to accept, I'll leave it at that.