Paul

Nice images. Your manipulation of digital images is great. For this one the negative space would balance the image better infront rather than behind but thats your call. Nice stuff.

Great! I love the lighting. The tiny streak of light on the shoulder fascinates me...it is so small yet adds so much...

I was admiring this photo earlier on this week, and for some reason I knew it was going to be POW. I also wanted it to be POW! This is a very mysterious and intruiging portrait. I love that shade of orage present on the man's hat. It's so intense and attractive. A well deserved POW!

 

Peter,

 

Congratulations on having your photo chosen as photo of the week!

It is extremely well deserved and I am so glad you have been given this honour.

 

Take Care

Pete

I would prefer it filling the entire frame, without the black space, and maybe cutting the shoulder.

A wonderful image that evokes spare and elegant Haiku and hackneyed painting on velvet at the same time. One wonders if the elves were also having a bit of fun by the juxtaposition with last week's POW. I love them both. Two very different aesthetics, two very compelling images. A nice lesson even if you didn't mean it, elves.

Congratulations to the elves!!! You've followed up a tasteless travesty (last week's PoW) with a true masterpiece. This may be the finest image I've yet seen on photo.net. Wow, wow, wow!!!

Paul,

I have always been drawn to this image, be it a "Manipulation" or not. I like the fact too that the man is looking out of the left of the frame.

 

I just thought I would check in with you folks at PN since I have been on a bunch of little islands in Thailand shooting pics for the past few weeks. I have to go now for I just got done celebrating New Years in Bankok and seem to be attracting mosquitos!!!

 

Ciao'

Mysterious image? Maybe. Great use of the light? Not in my opinion. More like poorly focused shot, with way too much black space around it, and especially behind it. I would rate it 9/9 if done in B/W and if the black background would have had some details (bare minimum would be great). As is, maybe a 6/5. BTW, your winter ice and the mill are marvelous.

I disagree with the one above said. In my opinion, the black space at the right add a bit to the myterious feeling the pictures conveys.

I think that the black space implies what is hidden there.

9/9

 

Well done!

Incredible photo...well deserving of POW! This photo grabbed my attention some time ago. Once again, less is more...in this case MUCH more! The lighting is mysteriously beautiful...there is so much I would like to ask this man...this photo makes me curious about him! Thank you for sharing and congratulations! Happy New Year to all!!

It takes incredible dedication to achieve such stark beauty, when those around you would reach out and drag you back down into the quagmire. (See "variant" above.) Well, it's about time for the usual suspects to weigh in with their tired perfunctory condemnation...yawn...

I know I'm not the first to say this, but the number of photos that get ratings of 7+ have increased dramatically. Can someone offer me some kind of explanation for this? I remember when POW's were 5's and 6's (unlike this one) There were about 10 photographs on all of photo.net that had ratings as high as 8 with more than 20 people rating it. Surely it's not because that many more photographers are uploading that much higher quality of work?

I like the B&W version myself...

I love the subtlety and minimalism of this photograph. My only criticism is that there seems to be a lot of [unnecessary] negative space to the left of the subject. Also, I would like to see this in b/w because the colour makes it look like a painting.

Love it. Perfect use of light and shadow to create a very unique and wonderful piece. It captures the viewer and invites a closer inspection.

The light hits his face from the front like the flames on a Hot Rod. As if he is re-entering the atmosphere, face first.

 

I think of a chalk on black flannel. I think of the extreme Caravaggism which was the avant-garde of painting in the 1620s and 30s, especially of George de La Tour.

 

I think the composition IS centred. This image leaves something to our imagination. The rest of his head, hat, and shirt are all there (I hope), they are implied.

 

This brings me to a personal observation I have made during my life time, namely that peoples need to use their imagination varies drastically.

 

I am the kind of person who only spends 5-10 seconds studying an image that shows me everything. Images like this one by Peter give my imagination a subtle push in a distinct direction and I can spend the next few minutes looking at all the things that ARENT there.

 

I really appreciate this picture while other people who need to see everything probably wont. They will edit out what they can not see hence I agree with Mark Meyer.

 

PS: Saul Phiton; I have no doubt that the increased ratings are due to the fairly recent implementation of the see who gave you that poor rating so you can hit them back harder accountability feature on this site.

 

It seems there are at least two parallel universes on photo.net, probably more.

 

In one universe (Universe #1) this picture is likened to the work of Rembrandt (!) and attracts such adjectives as "masterful", "great", "brilliant", and is accorded such accolades as to make one think that we are looking at the work of one of the seminal photographers of this, or any other time.

 

In the other universe (Universe #2) this is seen as at best a first year photography class exercise in the use of a key light, a portrait of someone whose face is almost totally in shadow (and to no constructive end, except perhaps to leave some blank space for white text), or a poor exercise in some sort of contrived, modish compositional theory about "negative space" that really doesn't come off.

 

It becomes obvious to inhabitants of Universe #2 that there is a support group of acquiantances (photographers and subjects alike) in Universe #1 who consistently assess each other's work to near the maximum numerical limit possible, no matter how facile and unextraordinary it is. Universe #1-ers see a parallel network of friends and cronies in the other place, to be fair.

 

Meanwhile, Universe #1 citizens talk in terms of last week's (Universe #2) POW as, of all things, being in "poor taste", as if alleged "taste" (or lack of it) was some sort of final criterion for judging a photograph, (unless you're an interior decorator). In reply, Universe #2 devotees blink in puzzlement at the almost 100% positive, nay gushing, commentaries on this image and shake their heads in disbelief that anything so bland and obvious could be ever considered as clever or original (there are so many "10s" for originality here, it's almost embarassing), much less "the finest image on photo.net", as one fan put it.

 

Well, I guess I belong to Universe #2. Where others see "negative space" I just see "blank space" - a great blob of digital black. Where they see the photographer's success in bringing out the model's "distinguished profile" (the teacher of this first year Photography class, maybe?) I see only far too much pointless "shadow" (read "black murk") and far too little profile to get any idea of what or who the model is, or why he is "distinguished" and (most exasperatingly) why we should love his orange hat!

 

Where are the blood, sweat or tears here? The effort in calculating a fine exposure or the vision, the depth, the compelling stamp of expertise or sympathy or statement?

 

OK as a CD cover, but mystifying for the rest of it.

I had a bet on with myself that Tony Dummett wouldn't find anything particularly noteworthy about this image. Also some other members whose opinions I'll await interestedly.

 

The problem for me is that the image lacks any sense of urgency or emotion. I could be looking at a mannequin for all the expression I can see (or imagine), and I fail to see the reason behind the making of this shot. The colour on its own doesn't say anything, and for that reason I do think this would be better in black and white, and certainly without the pretentious acres of black void.

 

If I were to go along with a critique of the image as it is, I think the splotch of colour in the middle of the blackness of the hat is not complimentary to the rim-lighting technique employed throughout the rest of the image. Also, while I know you weren't using a real camera, presumably it can be focused a little better than this.

 

"Boring", that's the word I was grasping for...

Yes, it is indeed masterful, and I don't consider my opinion to simply be that of a mindless lemming.

 

You used your talent to make an images that does evoke a sense of the character of your subject. What more can be asked?

 

Additionaly, I love the hat. Master stroke.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

less.

I'm starting to get it. I think. I'm still clueless about this art thing, but I think I recall hearing somewhere that a picture is worth 10,000 words. And that it is a sometimes-good thing for a picture to reach its viewers on an emotional level.

 

That certainly has been the case for some recent PoWs for some of us.

 

Honestly, I wish I could take photographs like this. More than technical skills are needed to make it happen -- the ability to "know" the subject, and visualize the way to best put the subject on film are necessary.

 

This picture does just that. It's a right-brain thing. The technical "imperfections" have nothing to do with it -- the image speaks strongly of the trusting relationship the photographer and the subject have developed.

 

Good choice.

Two things: 1. I hope this image has not been photoshopped to the right in order to get that fade into black effect. 2. Would anyone agree that had the face been turned slightly more to the camera, the expression would have been caught ?

Like others have pointed out, excellent in the hat countour and colour too (orange redness is always stands out in black colour) but blackness outspaced the subject (left side). Just adding extra comment that is the collar. It would be nicer if the collar actually shows up more.

 

Where are the blood, sweat or tears here? The effort in calculating a fine exposure or the vision, the depth, the compelling stamp of expertise or sympathy or statement?

Good commentary.

Speaking as someone who tends to lean to the right (Universe #2) I also wonder if blood, toil, tears and sweat came into this equation and I guess we'll never know.

Now I'm not about to give up my work with film emulsions anytime soon, though I am eager to see the Olympus digital SLR system due to be released this year. I doubt this will satisfy me, but it might well serve as a happy harbinger of better things to come, and I'd guess within five years I'll be fooling around with something semi-digital myself.

OK as a CD cover, but mystifying for the rest of it.

What's wrong with commercial art? It sells, it keeps the artist in tacos. And a dead artist is useless to everyone.

I like this image for what it is. If I began to see knockoffs I'd puke. It sort of strikes me that way, you know? I do wonder why it was chosen as a portrait. Is this a portrait?

Compelling use of color, crisp focus, and it absolutely works in its own way as backward as it appears to be in terms of tradtional compositional concerns. What it might be working at is another question, but if art attracts and says something nice on the way by then why not compliment it back? Nobody ever got himself hurt being polite to strangers in the street.