Friction Wheel, Bodie

Are you people critiquing the photo or the caption the elves gave it?

 

I'd love to have a 24x30 of this hanging in my living room, preferably printed on warm tone paper and toned with 1:5 selenium. Warm tone paper and strong selenium toner would bring out the rust on the old equipment and improve this photo tremendously. Not that it needs much improvement. I've seen this one blown up, and it looks a whole lot better on fiber paper than it does as a JPEG.

Kyle, go to the bottom of this and every other page, and click on some of the links that you never have before, but accepted by becoming a member.

This picture might be "technically" good, but it doesn't give me anything. Maybe it would work better in a photoserie together with other pictures on trains etc, but as a single picture it is quite meaningless. To me photography is not about techical achivement but about expression, and this picture doesn't have anything to express to me at least.

The juxtaposition of all of the various pieces of machinery is intriguing. The photo is actually a paen to the ingenuity of man.

 

Reading the mindless, inane comments of others, I think any photographer who posts his/her work must have a strong ego to have their work attacked this way.

WOW This is truly painting with light. The edges are extremely sharp, defined not by their existence but by the aomunt of light on each. Words simply fail me. I cannot express how much this photo has impacted my view of the world around me. Except to say "I wish I had taken that one."

Engineering at its best, or worse? I don't know if this is a great piece of engineering, or a terrible one, but the photo realizes this is an engineering of a long time ago. With big clunky bolts, and large slabs of cast iron, all meticulously designed to fit. It captures the details in a abstract way, its not a manual for a friction wheel's design. But it gives just enough detail to think...

I don't enter into any correspondence in regard to my assessments. Experience has taught me,- such to be time-wasting and fruitless! (H.K. 24.06.2001)

It is just a bit of stuff. Technically I am very distressed by the absence of the axis of rotation which has been cropped out of the bottom of the image.

 

Maybe the monkey with the camera was just excited by the large number of nuts ;-)

... that most of the critics of this shot probably like Monet, Van Gogh, Manet, etc when it comes to paintings. To my eyes this shot is meant to be abstract; just like the art I like. It evokes feeling other than "oooh how purty". That it has no central focal point, is one of its greatest assests IMO. Congrats.

To me, the appealing aspect of photographs of this genre are well exemplified in this photo. First, the subject/composition shows the large scale, complex, "coarse" machinery that was typical of man's early attempts to overcome forces of nature, in attempting to harness its power. Secondly, industrial evolution and development of photography during this period parallelled similarly, hence potrayal of the subject in coarse black and white and shades of grey, seems to give the subject, an appropriate context and feel. I would agree with those that have argued the the vertical rods in the center are somewhat of a distraction and may have chosen another wheel/piece of machinery to convey the same message. While I have greatly enjoyed the aesthetics of the photo, I have also learned much from the commentary. Thanks.