single photos Kewpie Doll

Beautiful....love those 'rosey' cheeks....nice photo.

Indeed this is a beautiful child and with very innocent expression, the lighting of yours is so well set, the details are fine and so the skin tone very original and do add to the quality of this portrait work.

Thank you for sharing it and wishing you all of the best.

Well, I love her and the lovely color harmonies. The shape of her mouth is indeed priceless, BUT--did you mask the hair on her left side?

Excellent exposure for this awesome portrait. Merry Christmas to you and your family. :)

Thanks Spencer

Same to you. 

Great shot.

The color is warm and that's buoyed by the soft focus. There's a richness in the way you've approached this. Kewpie Doll seems an apt title. But it also presents problems to me. It may be the eyes or the pose/expression but I'm having a hard time feeling a connection here, being with this person rather than looking at her. I wonder about creating more visual intimacy, if you even would want that. What your photo and even more so your portfolio has provoked in me are thoughts about the relationship between style and humanity in portraits.

Wonderful portrait, well done!

Fabulous work! a true excellent portrait.love it!

Regards! Hanan

Fred, you set a very high bar, I think.  I'm not complaining (I hope I never complain about high aspirations), but I'm wondering (after accepting your point of view) what it would take for me to feel like I'm with someone in a portrait rather than just looking at the person.

Put another way, Suzi has photographed this child looking at me, so there's not much I can do but to look back in return.  How could the child be photographed so that a visual intimacy (I'm trying to use your words here to stay on track) might be possible?  I think about that, and I have a hard time coming up with ideas that I could try out if I had been holding the camera at the moment the photograph was being made.

What really constitutes visual intimacy?

For me, and this is a personal opinion, the eyes are the key to visual intimacy with this type portrait.  And while I think a tad more light on the eyes would enhance the connection here, I feel a tangible link, an almost hypnotic magnetism.  This is beautiful work...  Mike

Yeah, I agree about the eyes.  I think, however, it will take more than that to establish or set the stage for visual intimacy.  How can I "know" a stranger?  On what level can I "know" a stranger?  Perhaps there has to be a mindset in the viewer as much as the right composition in the photograph.

It doesn't come easy and it's not something I can necessarily put into words. The word I would not use, however, is "know." Knowing, for me can be part of intimacy but one can know a lot without having that intimacy. Intimacy, I think, transcends knowledge. Many people think they "know" something about a person they've encountered in a portrait. In most cases, they're fooling themselves. Usually, what they are in touch with is an expression that moves them deeply, but without actual knowledge of the subject of the portrait. They often don't know what caused the expression or what it might actually mean to the person giving the expression or the photographer presenting it photographically. 

There are surely many ways to intimacy, but it's just as surely not an exact science and it's a very intangible quality, IMO. I have found, in looking at many portraits that gesture goes a long way toward establishing a sense of intimacy, and that was hit home for me this week when I saw a painting exhibition here in San Francisco of Flemish masters, including Rembrandt and Vermeer,  Sometimes a facial expression itself is gestural and often connotes vulnerability. But often it's the implied movement or the actual position of a hand or finger or a particular kind of lighting. 

I'm sorry to be vague but I can't imagine giving actual instructions on how I think intimacy can be visually established.

Perhaps better to give an example and discuss it. Vermeer's Girl With the Pearl Earring is looking back at us. Note how engaged her eyes are, as if they are reaching out to us and have traveled and moved in order to do so. This girl wants us and wants us to want her. The lighting . . . the way it catches the earring . . . this is a visual gesture, by the artist, to engage, to add lyricism. Her mouth, as if in the midst of something . . . it's on the tip of her tongue. We are privy to this moment and it could only be in this particular moment.

Anyway, that kind of stuff. I agree, a high bar.

I don't bring it up in order to criticize Suzi and I'm sorry if that's how it came out. It is meant more to encourage and stimulate desire and thought . . . to always aim for more potential. I don't mind being artistically provocative, even with an already very good photo, and I like the idea of questioning things like this together, which can certainly be risky but, to me, very rewarding, both as a critic and when receiving criticism.

Even if the photographer here and other commentators don't agree with me, your asking me the followup questions can give us all pause and may leave us with something that will filter into our own photographing.

Back to "knowing," for an instant. For me, intimacy in a photo isn't necessarily about actually knowing, but it often is about feeling as if I know something special, something hidden, a secret of sorts.  In order for that secret to work, I am often made to feel not only that the secret is there but like I am almost in on it.

Fred, I found this late....several PODs ago.  Yeah, I can appreciate the difficulty of putting this into words, but the example you offered is a good one.  Looking at the two, I can sense what you are saying, because I do get a stronger connection with Vermeer's work.  That in no way is meant as a criticism of Suzi's photograph.  If the bar is going to be set by the greatest masters in human history, then I might as well hang it up right now.  Our photographs are personal expressions, and a good discussion should describe the reactions of individual viewers as well as thoughts about how the photographer might have made a stronger or variation in his/her personal expression.  We can also make our own judgements as to whether the photographer achieved his/her goal, even if that goal is only implicitly stated.  I hope Suzi found some thought or ideas to think about in the comments regarding her photograph, just as I've found some things to think about in the comments made by Fred and others.

I've been with PN for 10 years, and these discussions have meant a great deal to me.  They usually take more than a single day to develop, and it's unfortunate, IMO, that admin has introduced a structure that effectively puts a time cap on these discussions.  I just don't envision folks rummaging through archives to see if there is anything of interest to them.

<<<If the bar is going to be set by the greatest masters in human history, then I might as well hang it up right now.>>>

I prefer always to have a higher bar to aspire to. That doesn't mean at all that I will be disappointed with myself. It means I will be excited about moving ahead and growing and developing. I will  have something to look forward to. Rather than causing me to "hang it up" it stimulates me to continue to learn and flourish. Without that higher bar, I might be more tempted to hang it up? If I've gone as far as I can go, I would probably move on to something else.

While I agree with you that photography and art are very much personal expressions and much has to do with innate talent (however we might define that), I also agree that we can learn much from looking at past works that have touched the world deeply. Yes, we can LEARN about photography and art. I agree with you that the Photo of the Week was an excellent and sorely missed vehicle for doing that.

As for achieving one's goals, that's an important consideration. Much of critique on the Internet is guessing at what some of the goals might be since we don't always have the benefit of the photographer's input. If a photographer is not after intimacy, they can state that in response to me and I would likely back off that suggestion. Likewise, I don't have to think that every goal of every photographer is of too much value. And this is not about Suzi's photo at all, it's more a generic consideration. The goal of some is to make photographic landscapes, for example, that look unreal and cartoon-like. I see nothing wrong in coming out and saying "I don't like this" and perhaps nudging someone not to buy into a lot of what they see and instead actually refine a more personal vision rather than sitting around and playing with slider bars and saturation tools. Of course, they can take my suggestion or leave it. A suggestion is just that, a suggestion. I never mean it as an order.