single photos I wanted to do an abstract portrait of my wife. I wanted it to be creative and memorable. I was fascinated by water drop reflections. So used a window screen over her portrait. This was on the cover of CAMERA CANADA in 1999

Crtiqueing a photo for being just "Unoriginal" is no real critique at all.

This would be true if people just said "it's not original" without givingreferences. But people gave them, and references to the work of Peter Keetmans were veryinteresting. The purpose of POW is neither to scream "wonderful work" every two minutesnor to defend/attack the photographer, but to learn.

For what concerns originality: the art of photography is older than one century and it's obvious that most of 'original' shots were already discovered. So it's very difficult (I'm saying very difficult, not impossible)to find out an 'original photo' that is 'a photo that nobody on earth ever made untilnow'. But originality is not a 'digital' (true, false) concept. I remind everybody that we can give originality a range from 0 thru 10. For what concerns this photo I would say it's pretty up in thescale of originality, even if is not a perfect ten since it's not a completely new idea.From the technical point of view is nearly perfect.

Mary Ball is right in pointing out that the raw idea behind a photo may be not original, but it canbe implemented in many different ways (and some of them may add a pinch of further originality). For instance, for what I can see following a posted URL, theKeetmans' photo "1001 faces" is a bit different than Glen's one: it seems that there are no visibledetails on faces, conveying more the feeling of a crowd of clones than a portrait, whereGlen's photo is more a portrait since we can at least guess the main characters of Glen's wife.

It appears to me that two of the droplets toward the upper left show the girl's mouth and nose inverted. Yet all of the other drops show her face upright. What's the optical explanation for this? or am I seeing it worng?

The water's surface tension (which allows it to hold on to droplet shapes) makes the water "films" in this picture have different shapes (which will depend on amount of water, air flow/wind, etc.). If the water is bowed out in the middle, like a convex lens, then the image will be upside down and smaller if it is more than twice the effective "focal length" of the water. If the water is thinner in the middle, it will act like a concave lens and make the object smaller but upright (relative to the original). We see both of these effects in this picture.

I would like to point out how frustating it was to take this image. I had a lot of trouble aquiring perfectly straight window screen for one. The depth of feild on this image is very very small indeed [paper thin in fact even at f22]. Another problem was the water drops popping while I was preparing the the set up. I certainly did run through a lot of film to get it right.While this image might not appeal to everyone because of its abstract nature. It creates a lot of interest and attention. It is important for me as a photographer to create such images.

In my limited experience, I find that photography can involve a lot of problem solving. I am pleased that you mentioned the difficulty involved in obtaining your result. The perseverance that it takes to make something like this is something to be admired. In viewing this photo, my eye traveled for a long time before I felt that I had sufficiently "seen" it. Thank you for an interesting viewing experience, inspiration by your example, and having the courage required to deal with POW celebrity!

That is so cool. Now this is a sign of an artist, one

who does something most people couldn't even dream up of.

I give it tops for originality.

 

i hadn't rated any photos before looking this one,because of my indolence. I just wanted to rate!!! originality!!!

I liked it and I will try to do a similar one :-)

Here is something similar...

 

http://www.photo-zone.net/images/tribute/keetman/1a.jpg

 

Lee

I do not think people will be concerned too much with this POW's originality if the editors did not start their comment about this photo with "This is a truly original...".

 

I downloaded the image from the above link and if this is not exactly the same concept, I do not know what is (the water droplets, the screen, the photo underneath).

Yeah, the idea isn't that original but still looks different from '1001 Faces'. In that one, the tiny faces were almost exact fascimile of the main portrait whereas this one, each is different, almost giving different emotions despite being of the same picture. I'm not sure whether he caught the 'essence' of his wife which is what portraits usually are meant to portray. Anyway, the photographer himself never said it was original (others did, perhaps without giving much time to think). Well, I like it and any other non-originals which strive for some differences. This is not blatant copying.

I think Glen should be rightfully proud of the results he achieved here. It stretches the definition of "portraiture" a bit, and certainly some of the mini-wifes are more flattering likenesses than others, but the overall photographic effect is eye-catching and clearly the result of good pre-visualization and solid technique.

 

The originality debate will recur endlessly, I'm afraid. As photography becomes increasingly accessible, both for viewing (through more published work and online exposure) and for participation (lower cost of entry, etc.), it will also become increasingly easy to spot influences and/or copy-cat works. However, it also becomes easier to find similar previous work and assume copy-cat intentions. Though working solely out of personal vision might be the utopian photographic art ideal, I don't find anything wrong with learning from influential work up to a point. I also don't know if Glen was previously familiar with the other work(s) cited here (if the answer is above, I missed it). Even were he so familiar, I couldn't automatically condemn him for using a technique that pre-existed this photograph. That said, disclosing where we learned techniques in our forum here can only further everyone's development, so it would be appreciated, of course.

 

Hopefully, that was coherent. Enjoy.

I just can tell : outstanding!

Fabulous effect. Just one question, why f22? With a planar subject, why such a tight aperture? I would think you could do it much shorter exposure and wider aperture so your wife wont have to sit so still...

that's a good question. though, if she is this out of focus at f22, how blurred would she be at f8 or lower??

 

originality......yada yada yada. yes marshall i believe this tiresome debate will go on endlessly. which is too bad. if i were a teacher of photography (and i am most certainly not, i am a student) i wouldn't mind at all letting students dabbling in mimicry, in replicating and borrowing ideas-both in vision and in technique. there is much to be learned in doing so. to look at an image and wonder "how did they do that???" is a great feeling, and going out and trying to do it is even better. you can realize just how hard it is to replicate a shot. you can copy someone out of true intellectual curiousity just as much as you can out of artistic laziness. marshall, perhaps this is the line drawn when you say "up to a point".

 

can you mimic robert frank and his irony?? or dorothea lange and her dignity?? lewis hine in his humanity?? if you can, kudos to you!! how many of us have tried to capture "the decisive moment"??? paul simon was asked whether he believed in guitar students studying formal music theory as well as studying other guitarist and their style. his response was "absolutely!! why re-invent the wheel??"

 

i take this to mean that it is possible to take elements, learn from them what they have learned, and strive to make them your own.

 

andre

The purpose of POW is neither to scream "wonderful work" every two minutes nor to defend/attack the photographer, but to learn.

 

 

I agree. I have been looking at the POWs to learn something new everytime. As a rank amatuer who dreams of being serious one, POW is a one of the invaluable asset to me.

 

My first reaction to this picture was "What's that?", I was drawn to the image, and that combination of abstract and portait is really good.

That photgraphs shows that there was a lot of tought and patience behind it, which paid off.

I wish someday I could come up with a personal twist to an idea like you did... :D

 

Andre, I agree. Artistic laziness would be a good point to draw the line for oneself on mimicry. There's also a point of economic exploitation, but that's a different matter. Enjoy.

Lindo trabalho. Verdadeiramente F-A-N-T-Á-S-T-I-C-O! Parabéns.

The earth is what? 15 bajillion years old? Alright, so there will N E V E R be anything original again. Ever. Period. So why doesn't photo.net just drop the whole damn Originality sham? You guys NEVER see anything original in anything. Ya know, the first time I ever saw a photo like this (and yes, it was THIS very photo), I thought it was beautifully original. OK photo.et, if you don't drop the originality critique with a week, I am withdrawing from the communtiy. I am sick and tired of reading about how many other god-only-knows how many obscure and not-so-obscure photogs have already done that kinda photo to death. Ya know, this forum used to be fun, now it's just so....predictable.

 

Leslie Keith Koller

Sikeston, Missouri

With all due respect to the subject and her photographer, am I the only person who finds this photo frightening? Between the human cloning, the distortion, the out of focus upside-down face and the sharp metal grid, this is one scary pic. Other adjectives that come to mind are "unsettling," "disturbing" and "freaky." I can't stop looking at it, though.

Re originality:
If you never knew something existed in the world before, and you one day saw it, is it not original to you? Just look at how people went crazy for Ravi Shankar in the 1960's in the west; the music he plays has been around for at least 600 years, probably more like 800, possibly as much as 1000-3000. Originality is relative.

In this photo, when there are several adjacent droplets, they join together and display a part of a larger copy of the picture.

 

BUT, in '1001 Faces' by Peter Keetman, (see the copy in Kunan Mo's comment above) each adjacent droplet displays a separate copy of the original image.

 

Can anyone explain this or is it due to digital manipulation?

Michael,

 

I don't think there is any digital manipulation. I think it is that in "1001 faces" each droplet is exactly large as a cell of the grid, while in Glen's photo some droplets span over more than one cell. Can you confirm Glen?

Michael,

The ones that span over three or four boxes are those that are reflecting the portrait. The two that, like in 1001 faces, show what is behind the grid each show the same image.

There is no digital manipulation except slight sharpening and just a touch of cropping. I was not aware of peter keetmans 1000 faces image, when I was thinking about doing this image. I never heard of this photographer before I won the POW on PHOTO NET. If one looks closely at keetmans image the face on the droplets is the same way as the background face. Where as mine is the reverse. There are quite a few differences in other ways if you look at my image in detail. For instance my wifes face cover quite a few squares of the window screen. I am referring to the full face not a portion. But I am pleased all the diverse opinions I have received about this image. This image has won a

few awards and is no stranger to controversacy.The editor of CAMERA CANADA took a lot of flack for picking this image. Some photographers just cannot accept winning abstract images.

To Glen, congratulations for your work. This photo and the rest of your folder is outstanding.

 

To the rest of the folks who say it is not original of anything like that, stop complaining and show us better pictures...