Untitled

Fine work!

d.

Exceptional!

Pure and so beautiful........

Excellent work ! Congratulations !

Greetings, Mircea

Wow! Incredible dream!

Beautiful image! Cosmic, with the sky and beach blending.

Please note the following:

• This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.
• Discussion of photo.net policy, including the choice of Photograph of the Week should not take place here, but in the Help & Questions Forum.
• The About Photograph of the Week page tells you more about this feature of photo.net.
• Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

Remarkable photograph, the composition, tonality, drama, and subject matter make this great image. The format is perfectly balanced.

The black and white presentation simplify the image and allow the viewer to focus on all the strengths as previously mentioned. For

this is one of the best POW's I have seen here. The image speaks for itself ( while I know some manipulation would have been done,

it would not be more than could be achieved under an enlarger) it is truly a great photograph.

Regards RJE

Very, very simple & good. A lone child giving a feeling of solitude. The footprints leading the eye to a subject heading into the great unknown. I like that there's no definitive horizon line

Floriana: This truly is a remarkable photograph. Its mood is both peaceful and mysterious. There is an amazing convergence of sky, sand, and water. We don't know where the subject has been, except as evidenced by a trail of footsteps, but she is headed directly toward the horizon.

Congratulations on a fine, fine piece of art. It's now in my favorites.

My best,

michael

reminiscent of all your powerfully poetic b&w images... consistently a specific fantasy yet stark aesthetic honed to perfection, yet each individual image always engaging onto itself. here again in this image a human viscerally engaged in nature, enveloped by nature, making his/herself communed with nature in the raw. this particular image is that poetry of the human, this young girl, of her own volition walking fearlessly, or maybe inevitably, into the a stormy sky, sea, beach all tied into the inevitably resurrecting storm, the mystery.... with the human surrounded by it?, embracing it? creating it? is it a metaphor for her inevitable adventure through adolescence, through the mysteries of life, is it her rights of passage? a beautifully and powerfully crafted image, beautifully and powerfully imagined, and extremely effective towards its intent. our recognition of you is only natural, oops a pun, lol... ;-} dp

This will not do. This is a dreadful pictorialist cliche from the footprints in the sand to the phony brooding sky turning into glop as it is smeared together with the beach.

What does this remind me of? Carmel art. Go to the expensive galleries in Carmel, California and you'll see paintings of the translucent moon-lit wave repeated ad infinitum. The stupid rich buy stuff like that by the yard and stick it in their living rooms.

I've seen photos and paintings like this Photo of the Week before. Like the translucent moon-lit wave it gives the viewer a ready-made emotional high without demanding an once of intelligent thought.

Note how cliche-ladened the responses to this photograph are. A lot of silly sentimental baggage has been loaded on to this image. If you think this represents the adolescent rite of passage in facing the great unknown, you have a bad or selective memory. That rite of passage is not a simple walk along the beach (or through a meadow, as Boris Pasternak wrote). That rite of passage is hell. The romantic walk on the beach comes later--after you have paid your dues.

Thumbs down to this Photo of the Week.

It shows imagination, which is great. For me, though, it's way overblown. A kind of hyper-pitched sentimentality yearning toward the mythological in scope. It seems to be screaming at me.

It doesn't take much imagination to scream. I see only the safe and predictable. This image is sophomoric.

Alex, luckily, we don't have to see it the same way. I understood quite well what you saw. I was talking about how I saw it. We agree on a lot here, disagree on some, definitely disagree on tone of voice of critique.

Magical Image,.......I LOVE IT !!!

this doesn't scream at me as a "romantic" walk on the beach, Alex; it convey through imagery that's skillfully visceral and emotive that this is representing a strong or perhaps naive personage choosing or inevitably encompassed by nature at it's most cruel or indifferent. indeed it's a type of style that we're familar with in one way or another, but, then again, we're confronted with derivative styles all the time, many cheap and cliche, but i stand with those who find this image particularly skillful and effective. cheers. dp

Wow , my third POW , I like it . Good choice :)
Is a work wich sell quite well on Getty Images and istock.
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?assettype=image&artist=Floriana+Barbu#
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/1089717/?facets=%7B%2225%22%3A%226%22%7D#14f86750
Thanks dear friends for comments and thanks Elves !

Wow , my third POW , I like it . Good choice :)
Is a work wich sell quite well on Getty Images and istock.
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?assettype=image&artist=Floriana+Barbu#
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/1089717/?facets=%7B%2225%22%3A%226%22%7D#14f86750
Thanks dear friends for comments and thanks Elves !

I agree it's over the top, bordering on trite, but I like it. Then again I like shots of puppies and kittens too. I don't feel an image has to be deep, complex, sociologically important or a technical tour-de-force to be visually enjoyable. There are a lot of good elements at play here. A powerful center of interest accentuated by a beautiful light and dark contrast. The leading lines provide a sense of depth that is palatable and draws you into the ethereal distance.
Images that have an element of emotionalism tend to touch us in ways that cannot always be analyzed. It allows us to read a bit of ourselves into the scene and thus it moves us in a personal way. I have no doubt its popularity on Getty images or here. Keep making images from the heart, Floriana!

Excellent choice....we might have a really good discussion about this one. When I first saw Floriana's work I was immediately impressed. It struck me as having its own creative identity. But after realizing that the effects were mostly created in post, I became less interested in the photography and more in the art. This image falls somewhere in-between the two for me. I don't see it as particularly good art because it strikes me as fairly superficial. I also don't see it as great photography because the appeal comes from post not photographic technique.

The fact that the image sells well is perhaps due to the immediacy and ease with which it can be viewed. It does scream at first glance and then quickly melts away into a sort of romantic, sappy theme. A quick wow followed by something easy to digest. This combination seems to work well in popular culture.

Overall, I think it's good for what it is. Just not really very deep. Merry Christmas everyone. JJ

rather than an offering of the fantastic and surreal, I mean the fantastic and surreal we recognize see and feel on its own surreal terms, this is a demonstrably self-serving composite of forced unreality. Doesn't work for me. The photographer claims the picture enjoys commercial success, and it may very well be, but I ain’t buying.

many, if not most, of us know young girls around the age of the subject in this picture. if we must, let's drag this image down to the barest simplicity and call it an illustration. let's imagine what sort of purposeful effect it might have on a child the age of the subject, we're we to ask the child for their interpretation of the image and its subject. after hearing the negative reactions to this image, i concede some to the "cliche" argument if the subject were a woman in a flowing gown, la de da de dah; but let's imagine a child subject and a child looking at this image; i believe it would have purposeful impact.

unbelievably beautiful!! surreal, like a wonderous road to eternity ( or something :) ... congrats.... to me, a well deserved 7...

tarek