FACTORY Frimmersdorf II - Germany -

the last picture from the blue series.....

hope it pleases you?

 

JENS

Wonderful --- Fantastic shot -- congratulations 7/7.

This is a marvelous somewhat phantasmagoric shot. The texture and movement of the smoke is stunning against the verticals of the structures. Very artistic.

This the kind of shot you wait for with anticipation after you take it...you just know it's going to be good. 7/6

well done!!!

Sin comentario.....

Absolutely super capture. Very nice. T

Excellent dear Jens...Greetings from Turkey...

Awesome!

Fantastic shot ...! Well done.

Wonderful image. Very well done.

WOW, this is super...love the colours. is this the original colour?

Very well done~!

 

Great composition.

 

The church and the factory work together very well. Combine this with the colour and the long exposure drama and you have got a winner

 

 

 

Nice scene, nice light, nice movement.

A very goof idea.

Ausgezeichnet!

An excellent photo - Truely amzing. Congrats.

Usually industrial pollution is quite upsetting, but this picture makes it seem very beautiful.

This is a beautiful photo. I don't think it could be any better. I like the solid black silhouettes on the foreground. Nice work!

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This is certainly my favorite of the series in that area of Jens' PN portfolio. And I do prefer it over the more heavily stylized HDR work. Obviously a shot like this is just as "artificial" (in the sense that we'd never see it, just so, with the naked eye), but I find these tones to be very gratifying. Choosing to juxtapose that anachronistic foreground steeple and the organic shapes of the treeline add, for me, an important part of what makes the factory - and the atmosphere through which its lights are swimming - feel so other. A very effective photograph.

One of the best things about the PoTW is that it leads you to the photographer's portfolio. In this case, I can appreciate the HDR pictures, but as I've said so many times before "when you can tell it's HDR, it's HDR too much."
That being said, this particular picture is very successful in my view. It reminded me of some of the photographs I've seen of nighttime Moscow during WWII with AA tracer and of course some of the victory celebrations at the end of the war (LINK). And I'm not saying that Hartman's picture is derivative or anything of the kind.

All of the very strong edges, supplied by not only the various structures, but the tree line in the foreground, are perfectly balanced by the soft flowing lines of the smoke. The sense of movement, but yet stillness, makes for a very pleasing composition. The shot makes me feel as if I am looking at a still taken from a movie set. Jens, you have a good eye and a very nice portfolio.

I LOVE it !  This is the first POW that I've actually liked !  Very well done.

I get a very sterile hit off this image as well as the others in the set, almost like cold, mechanical illustrations. This is partially due to the toning of the image in the blue but also relies much upon the way the image has been structured. The second hit I got from this image is one more akin to looking at a graphic than a photograph. As I looked through the series, the moon looks like it has been added in both and then I noticed the stars here, even with long exposures, none of these moving bodies shows any sign of movement? In general, I am not very enthusiastic about the work as something to look at as a photograph, but might see them as effective illustrations to some sort of book (feel like children's book illustrations maybe?).

Although I do look at imagery based on its own merits, it is hard to not compare work to that of others and when the others are masters, sometimes we just have to step back a bit. Anytime I see a series of a nuclear power plant at night, Michael Kenna's series on this subject comes to mind ( http://www.michaelkenna.net/gallery.php?id=7 ) and its intimacy and organic feel just seems so much more substantial to me.
The second work that comes to mind when I see smoke like this is the series Smoke by John Pfahl ( http://johnpfahl.com/pages/smoke/S6.html ) and this, in my mind, just might be the quintessential work ever to be done with the subject.

In any case, both of these works stick in my mind and their warmth and organic feel just over power this work for me. Like I said, maybe it is the blue tone, but I also think it is the over sharpening and in some strange way, a bit of a loss of atmosphere (maybe because of the over sharpened look-there are artifacts that might be from this or on upload--white outline around some of the structures)--I can't put my finger on it, but I just don't find this image, or the others, all that approachable.

(I will also note that while looking through the series and then noticing it here a bit, there are some color cross overs to greens, purples and reds that also distract a bit overall.)