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A good travel image? That might be one where you can make a distinction between subject-as-local and subject-as-traveler, although in this case, the traveler wasn't really there. (Once again, reading the previous comments is important). Maybe we should superimpose a guy with a cowboy hat onto a lobster boat and send it to Morroco and let them make whatever assumptions they wish.

i told u befor ...i like the way u did the other pics in ur portfolio "dreams"

but when it come to this one ...i would have never thought it is a composit of 2 pics ...u did a great jobe of matching the gray tones for

both shots to come out with that image ...what ever the way u did it ...it's so lovley ....this shot also i see it has a 3D light filling effect that adds to the beauty of the b&W composition...well done Nour..well done

I agree, some travel images become almost too trivial, at times I feel that from the pictures all cities look the same - the main square, the bridge over the river, and the statue of Colombos (or something). I try to make photos look "different", but it does take time to think about how to make them special. And sometimes the moment is gone if you think. Gotta capture fast!

 

in any case, this is a great shot. I love the composition and the lighting.

Also: I want to say that this shot is great in a sense that it looks like a studio portrait - the lighting is soft and almost like measured. The little figure of a sitting person in the back adds a lot of spice to the image.

The depth of the image is really disorienting, but it compliments the subject matter well.

I am always curious about the techniques in images. What sort of film did you use? Did you use a red filter? Reason I ask is I see that wisp of sky and cloud at the top, and the sky is very dark, so I'm wondering what was used to heighten the contrast.

 

Quite frankly it doesn't look like a travel photo to me. It seems to lack formality that's found in a posed travel photo, but more like a conversation between a local photographer and a local person. I can't quite describe it.

Hmmm...didn't get to finish my previous comment.

 

I forgot to say that I liked it. The informality isn't a bad feeling for this image. :-)

So, it's a montage...:-) Now that's interesting... Didn't occur to me as I first saw this image... In a way it will probably be mildly disappointing to those who saw this POW as an artistic CAPTURE of a REAL MOMENT IN TIME; but to me, this manipulation is just great. It allows us to get an environmental portrait with exquisite depth, when perhaps the original location did not allow for such a picture to be photographed in one single frame. I'd add, that advertising agencies use such montages fairly often when they can't pose the shot, so I guess it's an acceptable practice - at least from a commercial point of view.

Besides that, there isn't much to criticize about this composite's aesthetics imo. And I'm glad to see a composite that looks real, as opposed to the many weak or silly PS composites we see everywhere, which show no concern and no interest at all for the natural laws of light and dimensions. Well done. And it reminds us as well, that composites are not necessarily meant to create surnatural words...

As for the question about good travel imagery, well, I'd say that a great travel image ought to be an image that conveys a bit more than it shows. Ideally, great travel images involving people should imo portray these people's way of life in their country.

Can a montage like this POW be un-real, and yet portray a certain truth about the people and the place...? Imo, yes. Just like a "lie" can end up being the truth...:-)

If it is a composite, it does not qualify for a great travel image. PS work is good here - can fool a lot of people. The concept is good and clean, but a great travel image should have a sense of location and sense of story/history of the place/people. I like the picture, but can not take it as a great travel image. A good travel shot should be a real image - being there at the right time and taking a well balanced, well exposed shot with a composition that makes viwers think and look again and again - that's what I want to see in a great travel image.

Frankly, such composites don't excite me AT ALL. This is the easiest or rather the most lazziest way to capture something. And NO, this doesn't qualify at all for a good travel photography shot, it doesnt say anything about morrocon culture, life-style, people, religion... absolutely nothing. Please refer to Jan issue of NGM, for some good morrocon images. If, you start justifying such acts with commercial interests, then I guess one could justify almost ANYTHING.

Bravo Nour, Excellent photo, you did a great job in joining the 2 photos together, i believe you were there at the right time with the right equipment plus the right photographer, ( YOU ). Bravo again, perfect technique. Mabrouk ya Nour!

I'm so sorry, but I really don't like this strange composition. Ok, the man on background gives an up to the scenes, but this crop to hard below makes my eyes tired. And on top, i don't like the crop as well, i missed the head of this design behind the man.

It seams I'm not the only one thinking that photography is taking pictures rather than composing images in PS. More so when you call it travel photography; why not combining a picture from Egypt with one from Siberia? what fun that would be (on a childish level)...

Nour, you have some good portraits in your gallery so I will probably rate one of those instead of the POW.

To me it is like a invitation to the channel to the history! Well done!

Hi. I find both pictures great. Anyway I think that the morocan by himself would make a great deal of a portrait. Personally I don?t consider PS to be art at such a level. Someone able to take a fine portrait like this would be in the run for more than PS. I must insist, it?s a personal opinion.

If the sky is darkened through a red filter, then teh morocan would have to look harder. And shadows in the back... light is coming from the right while the light of the portrait is much softer and coming from another direction. That?s why I like feeling fixer in my fingers.

Wish it was not a composite. Disappointed in a way. Excellent tones.

Hm. I think I'm disappointed to know this is a montage instead of a more photojournalistic travel image. It's a wonderful shape, and I'm not against montages, but something doesn't strike me as quite right about it being raised up as "travel" imagery. Onward.

I agree with Marshall and all the previous dissapointed people in knowing that this is a montage, even beeing a technically correct done like this one.

 

"Travel photography" is supossed to be about documenting what the traveller has seen on the way, in the places s/he visited, the people s/he met, etc. Making a montage, and specially recreating reality to show something that the photographer never saw "as it is shown", is not what every viewer would consider a truthfull testimony of such an experience.

 

On the other side, the image is quite nice to look at, and I appreciate the honesty of the photographer declaring us that this is a digital composite.

Personally I think the background montage competes with the main subject for my attention. The portrait itself is excellent and stands up on its own.

A first thought I was so impressed with its perfection. Light, feel, composition, DOF, etc., and then to see that it was a montage? So the question 'what makes a travel photo move up a notch' does not make sense, as the answer can not afford to be 'Photoshop/montages', do you think?

I think all those who of us who discuss this image in terms of rtavel photography (is it or isn't it, and what is travel photog) are making a big mistake. Nour never called this a travel photo. And for him, it's not: he's not visiting Morocco, he IS Moroccan. It's a non-travel photo. When he leaves Morocco and visits the US, that's when he'll start taking travel photos. But for the moment, he has this in a folder called Portraits. It's a portrait.

 

Then other photos in his portfolio show a real mastery of photoshop technique. He sues PS - very effectively - to add drama to his photos. He doesn't hide this (in fact he states himself that this is a montage). His aim is not straight reportage, it's to create a dramatic impact. I guess travel photography needs to stick fairly closely to the observed reality, but this kind of dramatic portraiture, does not. So please, let's get our critiques away this dead end of is it or is it not a good travel pic.

 

I'd urge everyone to go lok at Nour's portfolio - the portraits folder has some real gems.

I also agree that this hardly qualifies as "travel" photography, in that it doesn't present a real situation, being a composite. "Brochure" photography doesn't apply either, because for brochures you should really have color.

 

To be fair, Nour Eddine El Ghoumari hasn't claimed this as "travel" photography. The most this says about travel is that of you go to Morocco you might see a guy down a back alley sitting against a wall, and then if you scoot off to Egypt you might get your uncle to pose for you smoking a cigarette. Or is it the other way around?

 

I also think it is plain wrong to talk about "composition" when the shape of this image is manufactured, by cheerful admission of the photographer (there is no blame on the author of this work for the descriptions others have thrust upon it). We can argue all day about composition, but in the photographic context, especially "actuality" or "street" type photography, the word "composition" should have a passing relationship with something that actually happened at the time the shutter was opened. As it is a composite, we don't know which part of the "composition" goes with which of the protagonists.

 

Better to use a safer term, from the world of brochures (sorta related to "travel", but only tangentially): "layout". Not bad "layout" here. A Nike logo, placed pleasingly to the reptilian eye in all of us on a rectangular page can have similar good "layout" too. That logo has made millions for the owner of its copyright, but no-one calls it "photography".

 

The picture on the front page of this site, by Ian McEachern, is rather better as a "street" photograph. The subjects actually were in the same place at the same time with the photographer. It is real life. It has genuine "composition", therefore. There's a photographic eye at work there. As to whether it's a "travel" picture, I'm not so sure, unless that genre includes pictures that make you NOT want to go to a place lest you bump into people there like the ones the photographer has captured. Maybe there should be a sub-genre coined: "travel advisory" photography.

 

My suggestion for Nour Eddine El Ghoumari is to go back to the street (or at least one of them) where this was taken, wait for the guy with the butt to reappear and then see if there's a counterpoint sitting up against the wall in the background. Snap that, capture a better expression, do it all at the same time, make sure the exposure's adequate for both foreground and background, compose the picture with a photographer's eye and THEN return to Photo.Net and shove it in all our faces, saying, "See? I can do it!"

 

Meanwhile, keep doing your layout exercises. One day they might result in a real picture. You seem to know what you want. The basic shapes are there. Now go do it live, a process that has the ever-present danger of failure built in to it. But don't expect the feel-goods here to appreciate the difference. They'll still call it "travel" photography, somehow elevated above the mere "postcard" standard (which, come to think of it, is exactly where this pic belongs, being black and white). There's a cost to everything. Artists must suffer inept descriptions and golly-gosh reactions for even their trivial indulgences.

 

In case this is tut-tutted upon for being a bad review, please remember: for honest artists - which Nour Eddine El Ghoumari gives every indication of being - bad reviews often result in better efforts.

Marc alluded to composites being acceptable in the commercial travel genre and I agree in principle. Take a guy with a cowboy hat and superimpose him in front of a ranch. That's fine, although depending on the context, I'd like it to be obvious that it's a composite.

 

Phil is correct to point out that this was never intended to be a travel image. . . . . . but it's still the equivalent of a cowboy on a lobster boat, so I still don't see the point, no matter how interesting the portrait or the background.

(always check the thread before uploading. you never know when you might be following Tony . . .:-))

Hmmm, in the Northern Hemisphere we call those gosh-golly reactions.

 

I am not sure I see the point of combining these photos this way. Actually I don?t see the point at all. It appears that the general consensus here is for travel photography to be journalistic and capture natural behaviors and settings. Sort of like wildlife photography I guess. Shoot from a blind if at all possible.

 

As a portrait, I suppose this would be very much appreciated by the subjects family long after he dies of a smoking related disease. I can hear them saying fondly, ?there goes Uncle Fred with that big grin and his damn cigarette?. Good times.