Smoker

I think Nour Eddine is a very good photographer and I like this image as well as many of

his other images. In fact he is one of my "favorite people" on this site. However, I am

personally not a fan of images "created" in photoshop. As previously discussed, this is no

more a travel photograph than an image with a Frog's head on a persons body set in an

underwater bordello. :)

 

I agree...HE never called it a Travel photograph. The powers that be on this site did and

asked for our comments.

 

Since travel photography of people is my passion and since I've been asked for my opinion

I must say that I agree with those that called this type of work lazy IF it is used as a

substitute to going out and getting a great shot. Photoshop is a tool for artists and we are

all entitled to express ourseleves creatively so if you want to be a "Photoshop artist" that is

great and there is some fantastic work out there created in Photoshop but it can not be

compared to the work of someone like Henri Cartier Bresson. When is the Decisive Moment

in a photoshopped image? When you click the OK button?

 

Don't get me wrong, I think artists like John Paul Caponigro, Maggie Taylor, Loretta Lux,

etc. are great ARTISTS but they are not calling themselves Travel Photographers.

 

So let's continue to be honest, as Nour Eddine was from the beginning. If you want to be a

travel photographer go and sit on that corner in the shot and wait for the smoker in the

foreground to show up. Don't go home empty handed and add him in later. Try to get the

exact shot you want in your viewfinder. Don't count on cropping to do it for you, or

sharpening or saturating. Don't let photoshop be the answer for everything. Try to do it

yourself with the camera. That's my goal anyhow.

This is a beautiful image. Contrast is great. Well done.

I'm returning to this because I haven't given up hope of pulling the discussion around to what the photo is (a portrait) instead of what it's not (a travel photo).

 

Every other week someone complains that the POW isn't representative of the chosen photog's work. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not, but this week it's true in buckets. This is definitely one of Nour's weakest photos, as a portrait or as anything else. On the plus side, the balance of light and dark areas in the frame is good, and draws attention very effectively to the main subject on the right (Uncle Fred with his ciggie) while still giving adequate prominance to the secondary subject (the man in the dark ally on the left). But that's about where the good part ends. While the two parts are well balanced in a formal aesthetic sense, they're not related at all psychologically - what's the meaning of the man in the dark alley vis-a-vis Uncle Fred? Answer: none. The two parts were put together in the one frame purely because they balanced in terms of areas of light and dark. This is no way to make a good portrait.

 

I think this is a great shame, because Nour is an extremely gifted photographer. His love seems to be portraits - they make up the bulk of his portfolio. But he seems to be always in danger of being subverted by his artist's eye, because he has a great feel for colours and dramatic lighting. Sometimes it works, as in the portrait of the boy with a sheep over his shoulders (when I first saw this I thought it was straight from the camera, but in fact it's been carefully and successfuly crafted from a relatively ordinary shot into something quite outstanding). But quite often the love of colour and form outweighs the actual content of the photo. That's fine if you're shooting abstractsn or landscapes, but in portraits (or travel shots where people are the point of interest) the aesthetics have to be subservient to the human content.

 

Anyway, if I'm lucky with the Pnet upload system (never having used it before) I'm going to put up the boy-with-sheep photo to show what Nour can do at his best. This one, incidentally, was shot as a single frame - surely the best way to go.

What defines a good travel imagery is the ability of the photographer to capture the essence of the culture. Nour has chosen all the right elements to make this portrait communicate about this man's whereabouts. The man sitting in the rear wonderfully uninterested about what is going on reflects his deep thoughts. I can go on and on and read even a piece of history on the wall but I am going to stop!

Haleh, what you say about good travel photography - capturing the essence of a place and culture - is quite true. Except that Nour hasn't done any such thing here. This isn't one place, it's two - the man on the right is in Morocco, the place behind him is in Egypt. The photo is totally misleading about the man's whereabouts. The man in the background is uninterested in the man in the foreground because the man in the foreground isn't there. And if you read any history into this from the background setting, it will be the wrong country's history (Egypt and Morocco are a long long way apart and have utterly diferent histories).

 

In fairness to Nour, he never made a secret of the way he created this image. But that's the whole point - it's just not a travel photo, and shouldn't be treated as one.

Great photo but unfortunately not a great travel photo. It is manipulated. This is not what was there, plain and simple.

photoshop or not makes no difference to me, however over photoshopped is another thing. I looked at the image and immediately thought the foreground man's tonality was abnormal for the lighting conditions of the image. And whenever a viewer is distracted by the craft, the art fades away.

Maybe you guys should write a book called "Photography Rules and Laws" telling what kind of manipulations are acceptable or not depending the situation (from photojournalism to abstract...)

I think that the two photos would have stood on their own as good work. I'm not sure that anything of an artistic nature was gained by creating a montage in this case, and certainly something of a travel-documentary nature was lost, in my opinion.

 

In spite of all that, as an image it is quite good, just not as good, I think, as either of the images might have been on their own. In spite of everything, congratulations of getting the PoW. You are obviously a very solid photographer whose work deserves to be taken seriously.

I look forward to the day when people will understand that photography is not journalism, and it is not truth, that it is imagery, plain and simple. Photographers have been combining negatives since the early days, so why must we poo-poo a work because it's several images joined with software rather than scissors?

Personally, it's not the fact that he's got two images put together that's the problem with

the photo. I feel the photo/montage, whatever you want to call it, would be a heck of a lot

nicer without the man in the foreground. The photo was chosen, in part, because of his

"friendly smile", but I find his smile to be a bit dodgy and insincere. He gets in the way of

the artwork on the wall, in my opinion.

Dissapointed to see how your lovely image has been maligned by others Nour, it is a good peice of PS work and deserved to be reviewed in that light! But the guy smoking surely is worthy of his own image! I'm convince you can produce great travel images after checking out your folders, but this isn't one and shouldn't have been called travel at all . ;)

It's funny, isn't it, that photographers are the only idiots who routinely appreciate photographs with magnifying glasses, as if there is some magic in the grain structure apart from the image itself.

Am I to take it from the technical details that one image was made in Egypt and one in Morocco? That's a very long ways apart. Doug might be right that photography qua art is not about realism, but what genre is this, where two images are posted as one because they are both about northern Africa (albeit at very nearly the extremes of the Mediterranean)?

 

Ultimately, however, my primary objection is that the smiley face interferes with the solemnity of the background image. Frankly, I like it a bit less each time I see it. It's just a bit too hokey for art (or photojounalism, for that matter), although perhaps good enough for a magazine cover.

 

Surely good travel photography should not be indifferent to some criteria of integrity. Even with regard to the lighting, yes, the light comes generally from the left in both, but the match is hardly perfect.

 

Sorry to post twice, but ultimately the image fails for me as anything other than something possibly useful in advertising, a "genre" that does not inspire me.

 

In fairness to the elves, I could have been fooled, too.

All this heat over Nour fusing a couple of images! I saw this image in a different light I think. Not scrutinizing it beyond reason! I do not find any problem with it being presented just the way it is. I would be interested to hear what Nour has to say about his creation.

nour is the new globoculture which is ultimately the collective-aesthetic of our latest herd of teenagers. by most contemporary measures (and many here), nour is a great success. by the standards of guys like tony dummett, who actually know how to build a house that won't fall to the ground in a few years, this shot leaves...

It was never claimed that this was a travel photo, it is a portrait and looks great as a portrait, PS or no PS.

i dont no why people think it is a travel photo .the photographer is from morocco so how can it be a travel photo. so what if he used two photos there is no rules to say its not a good photo if he does this.people do this in the dark room, use two photos to create a great image.well done nour cool image.

Who's biting the dust, this week...? :-) Nour ? I'm not sure, but I'm ready to bite it, so please hit me as hard as you can for all the modern nonsense I'm going to display in the present post. Somebody's got to be the devil's advocate, somebody's got to do the job etc, so I thought I might as well do it...:-) Let me start from existing posts I picked from this thread, and I'll simply react to them...

"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." - Fransisco Pangaro

This post worries, obviously, about what "is art" or not, and whether PS here *is* art, and whether PS in general *can be* art... Why not. Personally, I do not judge a photograph or a photo-montage exclusively based on whether it is art or not. Not every "image" (that's, interestingly, the term used by the Elves) needs to be art. Or would you say that for example advertising photographers are artist. Do they need to be... Incidentally, I do not see why Fransisco drew this conclusion, that light on the man is coming from the right. Perhaps, a minimal art sense would be to know where the light comes from when looking at a picture... As I see it, the face offers a lot less contrast than the background and the face may have been photographed on an overcast day or similar lighting conditions. Onwards...

"I guess travel photography needs to stick fairly closely to the observed reality, but this kind of dramatic portraiture, does not." - Philip Coggan

I would agree, but unfortunately, advertising travel imagery doesn't by any means need "to stick fairly closely to the observed reality".

"Brochure" photography doesn't apply either, because for brochures you should really have color.(...)" - Tony.

Generally, this is of course correct, but not always... Travel "photo-illustrations", if that's how you wish to call it, do exist in b/w. Granted the common thing is color, but everything has already been tried in advertising, especially all the ways you can imagine to go against a trend - and color is a trend.

"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." - Tony Dummett

Again, agreed. But how does this image ever enter the "actuality" or "street" category...? I think it obviously belongs to a very different category of work, precisely because it is a composite. So why not judge it for what it is? Why try again and again to judge it against what one may call "art", or against what a person will call "street" or against a "photo-journalistic" ethic of some kind...

"If you want to be a travel photographer go and sit on that corner in the shot and wait for the smoker in the foreground to show up. Don't go home empty handed and add him in later. Try to get the exact shot you want in your viewfinder. Don't count on cropping to do it for you, or sharpening or saturating. Don't let photoshop be the answer for everything. Try to do it yourself with the camera." - Cathy Scholl

What does Nour want to be. Maybe some photographers want to be good photo-illustrators as well, maybe they want to develop their PS skills so as to be able to achieve virtually anything in a short time as and when required (required by clients for example)... Well, that was one of the main reasons why I personally learned how to use PS... Why would a given photographer be forced into straight photography only...

"That's fine if you're shooting abstractsn or landscapes, but in portraits (or travel shots where people are the point of interest) the aesthetics have to be subservient to the human content." - Philip Coggan

"... have to..." you said...? Hmmmm... Why is it so...? I fully agree with this statement if we are talking about street photography, but it's quite clear that street photography does not allow "photo-compositing". So why apply the "rules" of street photography to a "photo illustration" that was possibly meant as a visual for an ad...

"Haleh, what you say about good travel photography - capturing the essence of a place and culture - is quite true. Except that Nour hasn't done any such thing here. This isn't one place, it's two - the man on the right is in Morocco, the place behind him is in Egypt." - Philip Coggan

This is not "travel photography" to me: "travel photo-illustration", maybe... And whether it's one place or 2 places is absolutely irrelevant in this case, because it just ain't photo-journalism or street photography. See it as an advert for a moment, and guess what... this man could actually very much be born in this very place where the background was taken. Then what would be the problem for a viewer seing an ad in the paper...? TO EACH IMAGE ITS OWN VOCATION, that's what I'm saying...

"I think that the two photos would have stood on their own as good work." - Lannie Kelly.

To me, an original photo is either a rectangle, or a square. So, we can't judge the two separate photos used in this montage, unless we get to see the original rectangles or squares they were extracted from.

"I look forward to the day when people will understand that photography is not journalism, and it is not truth, that it is imagery, plain and simple." - Doug Burgess

Yep. Me too, Doug... Me too...:-)

To me, travel pictures serve to make the viewer want to visit the location depicted. I think this picture probably achieves that. I was thinking of going to Morocco or Egypt for my holiday this year, as a change from the Canaries, and I might well take a camera. Think I'll shoot in colour though.

Oh... and by the way... if anyone has a doubt, that this would indeed be an advert of some kind... so do I...:-) If it was an ad, in most countries, this man wouldn't be smoking in the first place...:-)

But well, I wasn't trying to demonstrate it was an ad... Just suggesting to look at any picture for what it is - not for "what it should be if it were to belong to a different genre". Regards.

The people who are saying that we should treat this not as travel photography, but as environmental portraiture, seem to me to be exactly right. Images should be viewed for what they are at least as much as what they are not. [Thus, my previous comment was poorly done.]

 

That said, let's think about what the photographer was doing here. I don't immediately recognize, by looking at the image, that it is partly Egypt and partly Morrocco. I can imagine, though, in context of a number of such juxtapositions, that a statement could be made and themes of cross-border connections explored. That is interesting. Is that the photographer's aim? I don't know. But it might well be worth the effort. Simply as an attempt to create a successful picture, the combination of elements is probably less intellectually interesting, but a fun exercize anyway.

 

If the photographer were offering this as journalism, then surely he should be condemned for attempting to trick people, but that doesn't seem to be the case here, so we shouldn't judge him harshly. I can understand why people would want to be told, of course. Ah, well. Onward.

It might be a good idea to loosen up on our basis of judgement here. Instead of railing against the picture because of the incongruity of its international properties, I wonder if we, as viewers, can create our own stories with which to interpret it? It was clearly not intended by Nour to be a travel photo, he says so himself, and this has been repeated in the thread a zillion times. Maybe there are other explanations?

 

Just for example, perhaps the image depicts two seasons of one man's life, one which was spent in Morroco, the other in Egypt. Or maybe the image shows two brothers, one here, one there, etc.

 

The image was created in Nour's imagination, it is clearly not meant to be factual. Maybe it requires our own imaginative input to unlock its secrets?

The fact that this is a composite of two images ruins it for me. The foreground

portrait takes on an almost eerie, other-worldliness that makes the character

seem sinister--robs him of any human connection. Why this would be

considered a travel shot is beyond me. It's metaphorical perhaps, and it

seeks to communicate something but I'm not sure what that is. I can see

naming it a POW because of its originality, but I'd have preferred the

originality to come more from the seeing and not from digital manipulation.

A magnificient image! Strong textures, with shadows and highlights, and perspective with subject placements. The human interest value is off the scale with the weather worn face and soft smile of the main subject in the foreground. Well Done! Let's see more like this. Life Magazine would love this work.