Kiss of Love

Wonderful B&W shot ... !!. The scene is really beautiful and the hard tones you chose enhances its beauty ... Congrats (7)

Kind regards

Excellent work! 6

Touching moment!

A top-class street photograph.  This is a composition with rich feeling tonality. This is a moment with deep-seated emotionality.  Excellent… Best regards.

when even the bottle of milk of valueless! wonderful composition and great timing. compliments -koushik 

PS: it was a long wait :-(

A very touching scene. Excellent capture.

A first class photo. Well done!

Excellent shot. Wish if I could rate it more than 7! Thanks for sharing this touching scene.

My best regards.

Kallol

What beautiful tones and control of light. The affection in the mums face, the bottle of half drunk milk tells a story. Wonderful capture Umair.

regards

Gamini

Well done Umair, 

bk

Beauiful

Nice!

Pure and beautiful, excellent black and white editing. No matter how rich or poor or inbetween, the love of a Mother captured in a moment such as this is so tender and women whe world over can 'connect' with this intimate relationship. Thankyou for sharing - most sincerely, Gail

a perfect photograph... the details and the inclusions in the frame make it so immediately real... the hand protecting the baby's head.... baby's bottle on the ground... i'm so moved ;-} dp

Another superb study, outstanding photography, bravo. 

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.

Upon beholding the unpromising title I expected the worst. The photograph has proven to better than its title. It may well be the best photograph we've had as a Photo of the Week. it has not been photoshopped. It is not cute. It is not gloppy. It has not been HDRed to death. This is a straight black and white photograph of a decisive moment. A poor but lovely mother is hugging and kissing her ugly little baby like there is no tomorrow. The background is absolutely perfect. The baby bottle, the crumbly concrete steps, the rough table and the rough door. If you are the mother nothing else matters except her little baby.

Stand up and loud cheers for this Photo of the Week.

"It may well be the best photograph we've had as a Photo of the Week."

No. No, whatever it may be, it most assuredly is not that.

Could we fast forward to next week, please?

--Lannie

Regardless of the title (we're not authors here!), simply a beautiful portrait done superbly. Since there are no gimmicks about it, there's not much more I'd say. The apparent lack of HDR is refreshing. My only issue (I have to have one, right?), is that I would have lightened it overall perhaps just a couple percent as some of the details are filling in, but it might just be my monitor. Congrats on having your photo chosen for this discussion.

Regardless of the title (we're not authors here!), simply a beautiful portrait done superbly. Since there are no gimmicks about it, there's not much more I'd say. The apparent lack of HDR is refreshing. My only issue (I have to have one, right?), is that I would have lightened it overall perhaps just a couple percent as some of the details are filling in, but it might just be my monitor. Congrats on having your photo chosen for this discussion.

I guess that this photograph works in a double sense, clearly that of the close and very human relation of the lady with her baby or grandchild, and secondly, that of an environmental portrait of the two, wherein the place of living and the various possessions and architectural details are clearly shown.

It is different in that sense from last week's portrait, where the environmental aspect was more singular (just the ethnic clothing of the child) with the rest of the environment of the image non detailed or black. If the present image was treated in that same manner it would probably lose some of its impact, as here we cannot rely on any eye contact to convey the mood as was the case last week.

I think that the composition is fine and I am not bothered at all by what may seem to be a slightly awkward way in which the child is being held. That is not important for me and I am more impressed by the way the photographer has captured the overall position of the two subjects. The background is indeed busy with many objects, and some might find that intrusive, but I don't see very much competition for attention that may be created by the photographer keeping the background and foreground sharp and those objects in focus. They are all part of the subjects environment and therefore add to the overall image. It is not a studio shot and I think it should not be interpreted as such. The range of tones in black and white is very good, result I think of a good digital color to B&W conversion, and the effect is as natural as if it had been made as a straight print (unmanipulated) from a film negative. Nice work.

I like this picture. The theme of motherly love is communicated clearly through a well seen and captured moment in time. The soft lighting, the textural components of cloth and stone and beautiful black & white rendition add a timeless element to the scene. Well done, Umair.

There is no doubt in my mind that this composition could be improved through tighter cropping. If the whole figure were to be retained a slight cropping in from the right would eliminate some of the space on the right edge that adds nothing to the picture.

To my own taste, I would make a more extreme crop focusing in on the upper left quadrant where all the real action is. This would not only give greater focus to the overall theme but take a graphical advantage of the wonderful head tilt of the woman and position of the baby and zero in on the expressions of both, which to me, make this picture successful.