JUMP!

You have managed to capture a moment of fun and happiness.  I love the smiles on these kids and their attitude.  Tle lighting is excelent, the background fantastic, and the composition is good.  I just would love to see this picture in a larger size.

Regards,

Rosario.

both editing and composition are fantastic here. I like the cool green tones and slightly off center composition. well done 

The colors and lighting are right on the money, really nicely done. did you use any artificial light or was this all natural lighting? really feel done.

You really caught the joy of youth and the shallow DOF gives a great feel of space. Reconsider the placement of your copyright. A bit distracting.  Really well done, work!

Rarindra, the image brings a smile seeing a timeless happy moment of youth. Well done. All the best.

I like the light, the composition, and the depth of field. It's immaterial to me whether or not the photo is staged...I mean it obviously is...but it does show that the joy of childhood is the same the world over. So in that respect, the photograph succeeds in getting its idea across to viewers.

That said, I don't like the copyright imprint slapped across the middle of the photo. Nothing wrong with showing your work is copyrighted, but why not put it discreetly down in a corner or something. Dropping it across the center of the photograph isn't going to stop someone from "stealing" the image if they want to. Plus, it seems a bit egocentric to me. We can all see who made the photograph, even without the imprint.

Fantastic jump capture of this trio, very joyful kids. Great use of light. DOF control is also excellent. Rarindra did a wonderful job here.

Rarindra's portfolio is a joy for the eye. A life confirming colorful travel made with great photographical skills. I have stopped discussing with my self to which degree these scenes are staged of spontaneous and just in time shots. I just enjoy. This week's PoW is, as many others of Rarindra"s photos, just wonderful and makes me smile.
Is it him or just the country he has the privilege to live and work in ? I think it is both. As such, the POW is for Rarindra and for the beautiful Indonesian people and nature.
"I am an ordinary Indonesian who live in Jakarta", he writes modestly.

Great work!

I guess it's hard to miss with cute kids, golden sunshine, and story-book green forests idealized in such a manner. It doesn't do much for me. It is considered and carefully made.

I really enjoy this picture. It's deceptively simple: like the perfect soft-boiled egg, it has to be done just right to be ... just right. It's satisfyingly joyous without being cloyingly sweet. Very nice.

For some reason, it brought to mind George Bingham's painting of the Jolly Boatman -- which is both criticized and admired for its naïve American style (the flat frontal denies the action of the jump, making the man appear to be eternally suspended, motionless in mid-air). Bingham, when he got the time and money, took himself to Europe and learned how to paint like "real" painters. After which he painted a second version of the Jolly Boatman, with all the necessary motion cues, the non-frontal presentation, and perfect European perspective. He thereby turned himself from a first-rate American original into a second-rate European wannabe.

Well, I like the shot, particularly the different angles of the hats on each boy, but something seems off about it to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but the boys look almost too sharp in comparison to the forest, as if it was two separate shots or quite a bit of processing was done to achieve the DOF appearance. Not that that's a bad thing. It just doesn't look very natural.

Regarding whether the image is staged . . . The three children are not in lockstep with each other. Even though each boy is wearing shorts, each is wearing a different color. Their hats are arranged differently on their heads, and each boy's hand positions is different from the others. If the photographer did stage this, he attended to every single conceivable detail. Since it is at least unlikely that he did so, I suspect it was not staged at all.

To me, this image captures the sheer exuberance these kids are feeling while running through a luxuriant area of foliage. It makes me want to join them (even though I never could keep up).

Jim, I would guess Rarindra placed his copyright precisely where he thought it would be most difficult to remove. It had nothing to do with preventing theft only making it less likely.

Michael, I agree that in the sense you analyze this weeks POW it is not staged. It might be, however, that the boys ran and jumped several times, until the shot was perfect. As mentioned, I don't really care. The joy is there and the feeling good is transmitted to the viewer as in some many of Rarindra's fine images. Jump ! the photographer shouted.

This could be (who knows, though I doubt it) the most spontaneously-shot photo in the world. Wouldn't matter. To me, it has a staged look, much because of the choices (intentional or not) the photographer made in taking the photo and post processing it. The forest, due to its color treatment and even its depth of field, has the look of a staged backdrop more than an actual forest. The perfect sunlight, illuminating exactly what it needs to illuminate and falling off exactly where it needs to fall off, has the look of what a lighting designer would often accomplish. The composition, the placement of the three boys, the canned exuberance (which is how I see their exuberance) . . . none of this, to me, has the feel of spontaneity (and again, I say, it may have been a spontaneous moment). What kind of moment it was will often be transformed by the various choices the photographer makes both when he shoots it and when he post processes it. There are two different things. There's the moment as it happened. And there's what's presented on film (or on screen).

I say this as someone who likes staging and staged-looking photos and appreciates a sense of some kind of spontaneity coming through even within an otherwise staged-looking work. One can come across a non-candid situation (pose people, come across or wait for good lighting, etc.) and still capture or imbue it with some elements of spontaneity.

I like this photo. It has exuberance and fairy-tale charm: the backdrop could almost be a painted screen in the studio. However I look at it, the boys seem to be enjoying themselves and that is wonderfully portrayed here. Agree completely about the silly copyright line though, but I have seen worse (and on much less worthy pics).

That doesn't even make sense. If it has "nothing to do with preventing theft", but yet "makes it less likely", then it does have something to do with preventing image theft.

What a charming picture. The little guy with the hat over his face is clearly the mischievous one. :-)

This picture succeeds for me because it communicates the universality of childhood innocence at a time when lifelong friendships are formed.

I fully accept Rarindra's interpretation notwithstanding the infinite variations possible in shooting and rendering.

I do believe it is staged or is a setup, whichever term you wish to apply.

Try this scenario: "Okay, you boys...I want you to run towards me and the camera, yelling, smiling, and jumping all over the place in no set pattern, and I'll make photographs of you doing it."

I'm 99% sure this is one frame out of a series. That or an extremely lucky one-shot setup. No way the photographer just happened to be strolling through this fairyland forest with his camera and see these three little guys running through these enchanted woods towards him having the time of their lives. No way.

And I say this with that almost 99% certainty because I've done the exact same thing myself, both with people and animals. You don't believe sports photographers get that once-in-a-lifetime shot by just clicking the shutter one time do you? Same thing. I'm convinced this is the result of burst shooting, nothing more, nothing less. And I'm not saying that to belittle the photographer's talents, I'm not. I'm just saying that's how I truly believe it was done.

Fred, I understand your argument and I would accept it as valid if I agreed with all of your premises. But two of them are somewhat problematic. First, you state that the forest has a staged appearance because of its depth of field (among other things). Couldn't this, instead, be the result of post processing, specifically, slightly blurring the background? Secondly, you refer to " . . . perfect sunlight . . . ." An alternative explanation for the lighting in the center of the frame might lie in the post processing Rarindra applied, i.e., darkening the edges.

Michael, I'm sorry I'm not making myself clear.

I'll try again.

Of course it could be the result of post processing. I didn't say what the depth of field was the result of. I didn't speculate as to the cause of the background looking the way it does. If you re-read my post, you'll see I was de-emphasizing the cause and, instead, actually looking at the photo and talking about what the photo LOOKS like, regardless of the cause. What I said was that whether or not it was staged (and I suspect it was), it LOOKS staged more than spontaneous.

Again, of course it might and, again, I was not referring to the cause of the perfect sunlight but the APPEARANCE of perfect sunlight in the photo. I didn't for one minute suspect the lighting hadn't been adjusted through post processing. But I refer to it as "the sunlight" because, in the picture, it's the sunlight. The premise of my post, if you read it carefully, was that the LOOK of the photo can be different from the CAUSE of that look. And I specifically said the cause might not matter in the least.

My point had nothing to do with whether post processing was used or not. It had to do with the fact that a very spontaneously-taken photo could look very staged and a very staged-looking photo could have been very spontaneous.

In short, Michael, whether the background and the sunlight were naturally captured that way or post processed to be that way is not relevant to the point I was making. Regardless of how they got to be there, they LOOK like a lighting designer and set director had a hand in them, meaning they LOOK staged (whether they are or not). How the staging took place or whether any staging did take place doesn't matter. It has a staged look, regardless.

The very same photo with the very same light and colors, taken from a different angle with a different perspective might not look nearly as staged. I'm not suggesting Rarindra should have approached this any differently, of course. I'm simply suggesting that a staged look comes from a lot of photographic choices, intentional and unintentional, the photographer makes.

Fred, Perhaps I was imposing an emphasis that you never intended or that simply I fabricated. Thanks for the clarification; I now see your point, which is crystal clear.

Staged or not, it has some children charm, and some life of its own. For me ,the whole looks like a heavy PP, what saves it, in my eyes ,is the color palette, lots of greens with the two red point.
(complementary colors) and the little story of children mischivousness...no more , no less...

Way cool photo...you can feel the 'fun' these kids are having. I like how the trees frame the shot and the general feel of the photo.....very well done.