Untitled

Christopher,

 

First of all, POW discussion is a whole different ball game. If you look at all the reviews

of this photo prior to the discusion you will see that they are almost all very positive

reviews.

 

Secondly, The first image that Carl pointed out is simply a higher quality photograph.

It is one thing to flip a picture to an interesting angle and it is another to actually

make a fine print of the same thing. Anyone can take a picture and flip it, but it takes

a photographer to do the same thing at a level of quality that makes it art.

 

To me craftmanship should be a photographers main concern before trying to be

clever, new or edgy. Maybe that is the difference between those who gave this good

reviews and those who gave it negative reviews.

Marcio, being an avid cyclist (average 5000 miles per year) and shutterbug, I just have to say this photo is spectacular! Thank you for sharing and keep up the wonderful work!!!!!!!

 

-Pete

"The first image that Carl pointed out is simply a higher quality photograph. It is one thing to flip a picture to an interesting angle and it is another to actually make a fine print of the same thing. Anyone can take a picture and flip it, but it takes a photographer to do the same thing at a level of quality that makes it art.

To me craftmanship should be a photographers main concern before trying to be clever, new or edgy. Maybe that is the difference between those who gave this good reviews and those who gave it negative reviews."

Well put, David.

And thanks, Carl.

I don't see this as a particuarly stunning photograph - nothing that makes me gasp and double take.

There's a certain pleasure in passing time with the setting sun, looking out the window and waiting, camera ready, for something to stroll by. In this case, an interesting bike. Fair enough. So you take the picture you've been waiting for, and smile at the fact that - jesus - you've been hanging around for an hour thinking of nothing else, just to trigger the shutter once or twice.

It's a nice hobby, isn't it?

Thanks Marcio, keep it up.

Yes....this particular graphic approach is regularly used by photographers, but

as stated earlier in these reviews, this image not only swaps the shadow for

the opaque but re-orients the shadow and re-positions it in the frame to

provide....let's say it all together: VISUAL SURPRISE. It's one of the things

photography does so well....in the right hands. This instance of V.S. is almost

completely called upon by this photographer's imagination, with the activity of

the subject providing only a bit of raw material in the long shadow. The great

photographer, Harry Calihan, was skilled at translating the visually mundane

into photographic triumph in this way.

"The first image that Carl pointed out is simply a higher quality photograph. It is one thing to flip a picture to an interesting angle and it is another to actually make a fine print of the same thing. Anyone can take a picture and flip it, but it takes a photographer to do the same thing at a level of quality that makes it art... To me craftmanship should be a photographers main concern before trying to be clever, new or edgy. Maybe that is the difference between those who gave this good reviews and those who gave it negative reviews."

this all sounds quite clever (heck, even Marc G. agrees) but you shouldn't let one mere fact get in the way of making a high-sounding argument. and that fact is that you simply cannot make a fine print from a digital jpg file, unless you're content to keep it in a petit folio album or to walk right up to a wall and squint at it!

the fine print test argument is a complete non sequitor in re PN. all the images you see are +/- 100k facsimiles of the real thing. and you simply don't know what the real thing actually printed would look like. but early in the thread one contributor posted a fairly reasonable facsimile of a graphically finished image of Marco's photo that I might be tempted to hang in my home if it could be made into a "fine print".

I'm afraid I am still missing your point, Carl. The Turley photo you pointed to shows a woman standing with her shadow pointing down. To me all that says is there is a photo of someone with their shadow where one would expect it visually-- pointing down. It's a nice enough photo, though I think fisheyes are themselves cliched. Is your point that photos of shadows aren't original? You'd be correct, but again, that is not why this POW is visually interesting.

I have two things to say:

1) I like the photo. I find a strange "vertigo" effect... while I watch at th picture my eyes keep falling to the bottom righ corner. Besides this, I like it.

 

2) regarding the discussion about technical aspects of the photo: I don't know if this idea is new or not, but who could say that some idea is really new or not just a variation of other ideas?

Someone once said something like "every books are already written. New ones are just variations"... well... it may be so, but sometimes these variations could be better than the originals.

flipping or rotating the photo is not a new idea? who cares?

using shadows as main subjects is not a new idea? who cares?

 

originality doesn't make a photo better nor worse.

 

I think that these ideas are well used in this photo. I like it. It's not perfect and there is a lot to say, but I thing that "how good a photo is" (with all the subjetivity this phrase has) must be separated from "is the photo original?".

 

Congratulations Marcio! (almost forgot this :P)

"If I had been asked to say whose work this photro reminded me of, I would say Elliott Erwitt's, for the unexpected flip that Marcio introduced into it." - A. Kochanovsky

Carl's point, and his linkage to the 1st picture by Chris Benton, is perhaps that this "unexpected flip" wasn't unexpected to him, nor something a photographer who shot such a picture would not consider. The discussion on Chris Benton's photo shows that Chris considered several orientations for a very similar picture - including a flip similar to the one in this POW. End of the day, Chris decided to post the image shadow down. Why ? It's written on his page. But I suspect part of the reason may have been what Marshall G. expressed earlier in this thread - i.e that the flip is a bit of a gimmick. Conclusion: for me, what you call "visual surprise" is a vaguely amusing but expected gimmick, and not a surprise, and nothing particularly great - although I do not dislike the flip either in the POW.

My opinion: thinking that this image, because it is flipped, is the finest thing on Earth and that it brings some sort of decisive advantage because the photographer rotated the image, is just plain naive.

Carl gave us a link that demonstrated that other photographers had used shadows in a spectacular way and obtained a more convincingresult because their image was better overall. Carl mostly demonstrated that Chris Benton had considered the flip as well. I'm sure Carl had considered this sort of things for his own work at some point in time, and so have I, and so have many others. So what "visual surprise" are we talking about exactly ? There is no surprise. And what's the meaning of this non-surprising gimmick ? None. It's not bad, it's not great; it's a decent idea, and Anyway, taking gimmicks for great art is certainly not rare. Taking great pictures which need no gimmicks is certainly more difficult.

While I agree with you that it is difficult to make a judgment on a print's quality on

photo.net, I disagree with your statement that it is a complete non-sequitor. I know I

am frustrated often by a crummy scanner and low resolution, however, I highly doubt

that a fine Adams or Weston print scanned on my crummy scanner with low resolution

would appear equal in print quality. I think there are many things that you can tell

about the original print from a jpeg file.

 

Out of curiosity, what aspects of a photograph on Photo.net do you consider it fair to

judge?

Olha ai Marcio, como fotografo professional, eu te aconselho a nao pedir conselhos a ninguem porque todo mundo e o invejoso ou ciumento!

A tua foto esta belissima e nao se deixe influenciar por ninguem. Um forte abraco - Walter de Almeida - wcdealmeida@hotmail.com

While I agree more or less with all the points you make in your # 2) paragraph, and with this "originality doesn't make a photo better nor worse", I'd just add a few thoughts.

Lack of originality when the subject of an image is in fact its "upside-down position" (i.e its "originality") is perhaps more of a problem - at least to me. Shadow effects have been done. Done with bikes as well. The only substantial difference I see here is the flip, and yet, judging for example from Chris Benton's page, it's not really a difference either. So, the picture is not bad at all, but it's simply not original - that's a fact in my view. And subjectively, I feel that flipping an unoriginal image doesn't make it any more original. And subjectively again, if a picture means nothing special, and if I have seen similar pictures that were equally unoriginal, and if the pix is not more beautiful than other similar pictures either, then I tend to find it a bit boring, although it is not a bad picture.

The slightly irritating bit for me is just that a better picture that wasn't flipped (Chris Benton's) will appear inferior to those who see the flip as an amazing novelty. In short, the gimmick surpasses the content, the frame on the wall becomes more important than the painting in it.

perhaps I missed Marcio's comment that it was a print that was scanned rather than a negative scanned then inverted. the tech details only mentioned the media, not the scan source, and I never assume anything not specifically mentioned. and I only judge what I see. and what I saw here was a good photo image that should have been better rendered by Marcio, not by another user. ironic that we had much the same discussion about the horseman image until it was cleaned up. only that time the crowd scoffed at the notion that the presentation actually mattered even though the photographer was caught by the elves with his pants down, so to speak. and one more thing. many of the jpg images (albeit small) on the net of leading b/w photogs of the past 50-100 years don't look very appealing as jpgs, but I suppose even those weren't scanned from the finest prints. and I wonder how many users actually bother to mash their finest print of an image into a flatbed scanner in order to upload it to the web.

You've never had the experience, I assume, of uploading an image onto the web, especially onto photo.net where the image is compressed not once, by converting to jpeg in a decent size under 100K that rarely allows for level 12, but twice, because all uploads are further compressed by cutting the file size almost in half, regardless of it's original size.

 

What this does, reliably, is kill shadow detail among other things, so I've learned by looking at my own uploads to cut others uploads some slack in the areas where I know this is a problem. This doesn't mean that camera or printing technique is not considered, just that when you add into the mix some really strange monitor 'calibrations' that I've seen, you can't assume that others see the same range of colors and tones that you do.

I think that in order to see a picture for what it really is we have to forget, only for a short time, that we are photographers, judges and critics. In order to see, feel and listen to our true first few moments with an image we have to forget our experience and knowledge of previous works and let ourselves be consumed by the present. Past experience can so easily cloud and bias our judgements and disguise our initial reactions. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who isn't aware of the modern camera and listen to what the image tells you. Only when this is done and felt can you become the photographer, judge or critic once again to know you've truly listened to the image.

This image is a cliche, yet had I been in his shoes, I probably would have tried to get a similar shot. I'm not condemning him. He might not have ever seen another long shadow shot before and not known that what attracted him has attracted thousands before him.

 

Intended or not, you will find that your cliche images will be compared to a higher standard. Morey knew that full well when he uploaded his Mesa Arch shots, and the folks who picked it hopefully were aware of all the other versions and, again hopefully, figured that Morey's were as good as the best of them. My feeling of this image is that it's an OK shot, but it's not as good as the best of it's kind and I referenced a few images, as did someone else, to make that point as well as others which Marc described so well.

 

Originality is very hard to grasp since it must always factor in your viewing experience and, as always, your genre preferences. We could define 'originality' as the shot you got that no one else saw even though they were all there at the same time and place. That leaves out the setups and manipulations, but as I said, we all define it according to how we shoot or perhaps what we aspire to.

 

In case you're wondering what has Doug completely mystified is putting me, a professional piano technician for over thirty years in the same league with him, given that he actually does have considerable professional experience as a photographer. Now if we're talking about training as a critic, I actually do have some, as does Marc, who like me, does this in a more formal setting than just here on the web. So do many others. It's always interesting to read the protests of those who have none assert that there is no such thing and that all contributions, including 'they're all just fine the way they are', are equally valid.

Oh if only I could turn my brain off and react emotionally to something (everything) as though I had been asleep for the last 40 years. My first impression of this photo remains unchanged. It is a fair to average representation of a well explored theme that is common to many books and other media on how to take "creative photos." I think Carl has gone to heroic lengths to illustrate this for our benefit only to be chided for his efforts.

In my mind flipping a photo upside down is about on the same level of creativity as adding plastic special effects filters or a filter in a photo editor. These are very basic manipulations and do not fall into the category of photographic epiphanies. An average photo rotated 180 degrees is still an average photo (in my opinion). Im not against filters or photo editors in general but screwing on a filter (do filters still screw on) or pushing a button to convert your photo to a line drawing can hardly be praised as a truly creative act.

If this photo works for you, that is fabulous. If you have never seen a similar photo before, well now you have. I dont have any problem with the photographers treatment of the subject or the presentation. Good observation, visualization and the patience to capture his subject on film. It must be recognized that this is a mature subject, meaning that it has been done many times before. In an ideal world (reasonable, thinking, intelligent) this would mean that we should at least attempt to bring something new to the table. For me flipping the photograph does not rise to that level but it does show that the photographer is going beyond making a simple exposure and continuing with the creative process after the film is processed.

I would have tried the high contrast treatment suggested and also cleaned up some of the more distracting parts of the background but not by the extreme cropping that was suggested previously. I would have also tried flipping the photo horizontally to make it read in the left to right direction which was also suggested earlier in the discussion.

I salute Doug Burgess for his superior sense of humor. Personally I would have tired of having my point constantly missed by now

I certainly did not proclaim myself a superior critic-- but, I feel rather qualified to like this photo for the rather simple reason I gave earlier. No amount similar photos will change the fact-- or my opinion-- that this photo is kind of cute.

Ill agree with Marc, Carl, and others, that flipping any image is gimmicky and that that fact alone should not separate a simple image from its class and place it at a higher level. However, that is not what we are saying hereat least not me. What I was trying to say is that the image has a good feel to it and all of us can relate to it in an instant (its representation that is). I think that most of us agree that including the actual person at the bottompedaling upside-downis detrimental, unnatural, and uncomfortable to look at, and that if we remove it, the photo suffers loss (a no win situation that limits its success precisely because its success is limited).

 

What I (and I think others) was trying to say is that this photo works as presented because it seems that this was the intent of the photographer. I dont know if this is the case, but I believe that the photographer was looking to capture a shadow and not a person, a symbol and not a reality, and with this symbol display the life of an individual. Its difficult to tell if the photographer composed this shotwith this orientation in mindat the time of shooting, or if he made this discovery after he dropped a print on the floor that landed upside down. But whatever the case, I like the symbolism more than the reality: an obscure personage living a real life. This is why I like the photo. Too bad that the inverted cyclist is shown and too bad that he cant be removedlike that feeling I get when I see the shadow though, and I guess thats why it works for me and why Im willing to overlook the uneasiness of viewing it.

 

One more note: the reason why so many dont like this photo is because the image is obviously flipped. If the cyclist was square on, so that we could see only the top of his head and not see his side, the image could still be accepted as being taken from a true perspective and we wouldnt get this disorienting vertigo feeling. The need to flit the image would then be from simple curiosity and not in an attempt to correct a wrong. Some of us are simply more forgiving than others I guess.

you know, I am so glad that this discussion has drolled on about picking all the wrong nits. the photo is criticized for the vertical flip, for the tilt, and then for not flipping it horizontally so that it "reads" left to right as to the subject's motion. well, speaking of being imprisoned by rules, and not seeing the forest for the trees...

well, HELLOOOOOOOO... guess what. Marcio has trumped all of you! Marcio recognized quite obviously that the GRAIN OF THE ROAD is a very important, albeit a subtle visual element in this photo, and a photographic nuance that virtually all the seasoned critics, anti-critics, and observers have missed! it's this road grain that gives the photo it's visual direction. and any visually awake "critic" ought to have naturally noticed it.

not only that, the road grain quite naturally explains the photo's tilt. moreover, the visual flow of this photo indeed moves left to right because of it. kudos to Marcio for self-creating this composition! and it matters not at all that he didn't cynically preplan the finished work. what matters is that he kept his mind's eye fluid to allow it to happen. and THAT is an artistic process going on.

what Marcio missed was a higher contrast levelling treatment and a tighter crop to further intensify this visual impact, something that would help to eliminate the so-called vertigo that some viewers have brought on themselves by trying to turn their heads upside down to view what Marcio intentionally unintended by his presentation!

Just a thought but I was just wondering how many of the "for" or "against" people are right or left handed? You made an interesting point about the horizontal flip and why that should matter. I wonder if it matters more if a person is right or left handed? Is that a learned response or a physical response? I would think a typical photo would be likely to be "read" from bottom to top (near to far perspective. Painters seem to be much better than photographers at the game of directing viewers around a frame.

 

I also wonder how easy or difficult it is for people to pick out a pastry brush in the utensil drawer at home when everything is all jumbled together in the drawer. I think some people are just better at sorting out visual clues than others so they are likely more comfortable with different perspectives.

 

Maybe there is a more practical than emotional reason why people accept or reject this photo.

I think you may be substituting some of your own ideas for Marcio's.

Marcio states, "I made another print of this photo that I like more, flipping the negative so the biker comes from left to right (upside-down too). It seems more natural to the eyes ,as we read this way."

"It's this road grain that gives the photo it's visual direction. and any visually awake "critic" ought to have naturally noticed it."

This is absolutely agreed - glad I'm still (perhaps) awake. :-) Never said otherwise. But the real question, to me, is: does this image need any "visual direction"...? Or, to be precise, does it need any "external point of reference" (besides bike and shadow), to be what it is and work the way it does...?

That's a tough but very interesting question imo. I'm not certain about the answer, but let me propose this... By inverting the image, the photographer cancelled an existing visual direction (the one offered by the real scene), and replaced it with another visual direction, whereby the real bike "hangs" after its shadow. When he did so, in my view, he converted his image from a real scene to an "abstract scene". Or, as Isidro would say, a "symbolic" representation of the scene. (I personally wouldn't call this "symbolic" till I see what exactly it symbolizes, but that's a different story). Bottom line is that, to me, this image has gone through a simple, known, yet quite impactful abstraction process. This is the reason why I feel I no longer need the road or any reference point as far as I am concerned. A bit like an astronaut doesn't really need to know where was the top and the bottom, when he's no longer on the ground and no longer subject to our gravity. Space has not just been reversed here, imo, it has been "suspended", disqualified [which is indeed interesting, and by no means bad, eventhough it isn't new]. If I imagine getting rid of the road texture here, I can see that all points refering to the original scene would be gone - except one. Which one ? Well, we would still feel a relation between bike and shadow, because they would still be in contact (with a contact point) at a given angle. It would still feel 3D basically. The option of having no visible road texture would leave the bike and its shadow in a dialog, out of any physical reference to a "place", and together they'll give depth to the image. This depth is imo all we need, and not a reference to a location. The road texture doesn't really bother me either per se, it just so happens that I feel it takes away from the simplicity which was the aesthetical strength of this image to me.

Reminds me of work from famed photographer "Henry Cartier-Bresson".! of some 50 years or so, ago. Simple - but nice.

I have seen and rated that pick a year ago. Seeing it again now wouldnt change my rating. 'A classic', 'a cliche', 'not original','seen that before'... may be so what ... tell me what is less original in that picture compared to top pages of Top gallery PNet pictures please over the last year, rather interested to hear about that?!

Yes there are other pics here and there of shadow as the subject another bicycle also from Brazil! and another winner are also quite good examples as well IMO... I would have like to take this and have the idea of flipping it this way I presume..

what did I like in this picture?... a picture is a frozen moment, no kinetic, no move, guy looks glued on the bicycle, looks like he stopped cycling but look well ... the shadow is on a steep slope, the ground looks like blurred by the high speed we can see the rays like a cartoon, the head is well inside the shoulder, the luggage rack is empty ... it is not a picture it's a movie.

Congrats Marcio!