Father and son

No my friend John, I did not mean the father but the person have the witting bads, look please between his legs for two table legs.
Thank you my friend.

Yea, I said father, not grandfather. I see the legs, but they don't read odd to me. The father, man with the pad, is sitting sort of cock-eyed in the seat and hides legs with his own. There just seems to be another piece of furniture behind him. Just because I can't see "all" of the legs, doesn't mean anything, just that the tangencies with those we can see, and the camea angle, obscure those we can't. I don't see any clone job here.

There is no clone job. There is another chair behind.

for me this piece has movement...not so much action but a kinetic feel to it...there's a process that's caught by the photographer and I have a sense of the movement continuing after the shot...it doesn't look staged but that of real life....David

The stool behind the chair the father is seating in looks perfectly normal, that is simple to understand and presents no incongruity. The way the forward leg of the chair the father is seated on becomes foggy an looses detail an definition on the right side near the bottom is what caught my eye. If something was not cloned out at the bottom of that chair leg then I suppose it is my bad eyesight or an illusion of light.

Gordon, think the confusion is because the shape to the right of the front leg is actually the back leg and thus it ends, creating the sense that the front leg has vaporized there. It does look odd, maybe because of a shadow and/or the way the dirt is below the chair. I just don't see any indication of a clone myself.

I see now what Gordon said! There is no clone. That is amazing coincidence, look like impossible photo. I suppose you can understand on this original crop... <a href="http://s796.photobucket.com/albums/yy250/korpaslika/?action=view&current=IMG_0654.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i796.photobucket.com/albums/yy250/korpaslika/IMG_0654.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

http://i796.photobucket.com/albums/yy250/korpaslika/IMG_0654.jpg

Dear Bojan, I am sorry for my earlier pointing out the possible mix up of different parts of this image but my friend I take your words with pleasure that there is no Cropping to the image, thank you for pointing that out and wishing you all of the best.

Bojan, Thank you for posting that detail from the original. I now see that this is an illusion caused by the alignment of the two chair legs. Between my poor eyesight and the size of the B&W original the bottom of the leg looked odd.
John, yes even at a smaller size you caught what I had missed, thanks.

I don't know if Bojan has any interest in posting the original photo in total (I wouldn't if it were me!), but I do think that what we see in this small area does resolve some earlier issues regarding the tonal range here, at least as I understood the comments. It was suggested earlier that possibly the shadow values were raised (HDR?) and the highlights were depressed. I think the little view here actually suggests that the contrast was more likely expanded a bit to get the POW version. We can't see the highlight areas, but obviously the contrast in this area is even less than in the POW. The unreality that maybe was noticed by some might have actually been pushing the contrast up a bit too much for our natural reading of the scene. In any case, the comparison might be enlightening.

I apologize for causing this fracas being the original person calling this a composite. But now that I see the color portion, I was mistaken. It was an illuasion.

In the upper left corner is a candle, part of a shovel and the wire. The wire is most important because it continues in the original photo under the grandpa linking both protions but proving thiere was not two photos. However, I still think the space between the two is too great and would be more intimate as I tried to represent in the photo I posted. The original is a keeper regardless and I'm sure will be kept in his family a long time.

I place some importance on whether or not this is a composite (which it is not). I place more importance on the fact that it looks like a composite. I find it distracting to constantly discuss photos in relationship to reality. Is it a composite? Is it Photoshopped? Is it manipulated? That's energy spent not discussing what we're seeing but rather what we may or may not know about the photo. Don't get me wrong, sometimes knowing that a composite was made or that some cloning was done will effect my aesthetic response to the photo. But a fairly constant and prioritized emphasis on it seems misplaced. Often, dwelling on issues of manipulation and cloning seem a way of distancing ourselves from what we're actually looking at, which is a photograph and not an artifact that is placed before us as a comparison to the real world.

I think that part of the problem with the incessant discussion about manipulation is the fact that the photos chosen consistently lack depth and substance, within that void the same silly nit-picks continue to be raised.
Given an image with some meat on its bones perhaps people would have something more interesting to chew on than was it manipulated or not.

Great point, Gordon. I heartily agree!

Yes, a very good point Gordon!

I agree with Gordon and Fred.
Issue may be that post-processing is not that easy. It does not suffice to have photoshop-like software to be able to produce a picture which works. It is very easy to over-saturate, flatten, over-sharpen, over-contrast.
It requires skills which I, for example, don't have and they do not interest me.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
There is some purpose in the Elves' approach to selecting the photo of the week. The rules say that it is no reward - even if the symbol is a golden winner's cup. Recent choices of the PoW concerned very disputable images.
But again, we are not supposed to discuss the choices ...

In my observation, it has almost been funny how when a really interesting photo, one that is a little more substantive, has been the POW not much is really ever said. The discussion generally dies after a day or two except for the occasional "great shot" or "I don't like this".

I think it is just the nature of photo sharing sites, that most (certainly not all) are honing their technical skills and haven't yet gone too far into the aesthetic let alone the more conceptual realm. Although overdone at times, the technical discussions do play an important role here. Bad technique or naive application of software is part of the growing process and discussing its effects can be productive to one's development. If someone is a more mature worker, discussing technique is sort of pointless and can actually be offensive, as most likely what was done was done for effect and is purposeful (although certainly something could have been overlooked). But this is rarely the case here and so technique and such does seem more relevant.

John, for clarification, I wasn't talking about technique, which is vitally important and worth discussing. I was talking about incessant debate over manipulation and cloning and whether something has been altered from the so-called reality it is taken to represent. There's a difference between spending time on that and talking about focal and exposure decisions and technique.

Fred, I think those two things are part of the technical side of photography. The problem as I see it is not debating if it has been done well, or serves the photo, but the focus on whether it should be done or not as part of the photographic process. That has been discussed to death and there will be no resolution, but the effect in an individual photograph (image) is unique on a weekly basis and worthy of discussion. I don't know that there is a way to not have folks not think something was done that wasn't though, that has been an issue here for years. I think only photographers actually care, in the absolute, while most others just judge an image as successful or not.

I have not been following this discussion, and I haven't yet read the previous comments. I have read John A's last comment, referring to (and I sincerely hope I've interpreted the comment correctly) whether computer manipulation had been applied to a photo. John stated, "I think only photographers actually care, in the absolute, while most others just judge an image as successful or not." How I wish that were true. But as I've stated before, one of the first and most frequent questions I hear from the general public at art shows or other venues where photography is being displayed is, "Is it real?" In other words, the public is asking whether the beauty and uniqueness in the photograph is something that was seen and captured with the camera, or rather if it is something that was created / enhanced with a computer. From my experience, non-photographers do care, and for them it's beyond simply whether the image works or not.

I agree entirely that the discussion of manipulation usually fails to address whether it has been done well, and the discussion often fails to address the aesthetics of the image and the story the manipulated image tells or the feelings it generates. Perhaps the elves will choose an image from the "digital alterations" category where the act of manipulation is not in question and these other, larger questions are discussed (perhaps the elves have done this in the past -- I haven't looked; but I don't think a photo from this category has been selected recently, and there are some very interesting, creative images there).

I agree Stephen. Photography is connected to reality in a way that other forms of art are not. In photography, authenticity matters. I also get asked the question from non-photographers about authenticity often. But really, in this case, as photographers we know enough to know what this image really is. It is a good but not great photojournalistic image. Why not great? Because the moment itself is not particularly powerful. This is also what makes a great landscape distinct from on ordinary one. The moment matters. And if the moment is created after the fact by some trick of darkroom light or other unauthentic manipulation, then immediately the image is not as good. We want to know if a real moment was captured. Of course, this is not the case for art in general. Art is not about the moment. This is one key thing that distinguishes art from photography. By it's very nature, photography preys on the decisive moment. This is why so many great photojournalists and landscape photographers speak so much about it. Despite what some want to say about photography, we do care what photography is, we do care whether an image is authentic and we do care about photographic technique (as opposed to darkroom technique). So while the artist is free not to care how something was done, only that it moves us in some way, the photographer is bound by a more stringent code. If we are going to call it great photography, then photography technique has to matter. And here, the ability to capture the decisive moment is not as evident as it could be. Now if art is your only concern, then photographic technique is irrelevant. So is this good art...I'm not qualified to judge. Is it good photography? Yes good, but not great. Best, JJ