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Comments are most welcome. Thank you.

Wow! What a small world! We meet on the critique forum. This photo is wonderful. I simply love it! I don't know how you managed to get this look, ot maybe that's just the way he looks at people, but I find it very piercing. His eyes are fantastic. Beautiful! S.

 

P.S. And the little dog, doing his job, is so heart-moving.

 

P.S.2 The sepia tones are excellent.

agree with Sabina, It is very nice work and technical focus.

I keep coming back to this picture. It gives me the impression that it's set in Place Pigalle, in Edith Piaf's time... he actually looks like one of her lovers..

Alexandre, a express㯠do mi�do e a "pose" do c㯠complementam-se de forma fant᳴ica. Tambem costumo ver esta cena, cᠰela nossa Baixa.

 

Abra

Probably a really great portrait - lovely subject ! BUT.. I think there is waaaaay too much burning and/or other PS work on this picture: it almost looks like a drawing to me, which can sometimes be ok, but not in this case: I'd like to feel this is reality. Would love to see a more or less unmanipulated version of it. Please let me know if you post one. Regards.

I agree with Marc G. for the drawing feeling, but still this is a PRICELESS street EXPRESSION!!!!!

 

Bravo from me :) 7/7

 

Biliana

Painting, its a painting! I would love to have it on my wall

Yeah, this is a tough one because it is such a great portrait but a diffucult crop with a couple of eyes creeping in and lots of background information challenging the foreground subject. I do not mind the painting/burning...it is just to harsh or to quick. I actually think if you burned more of the background to match the blacks of your subject but avoided the halo glow around the boys head you could quiet the background. I really do love this shot.

I came back, again, and checked the comments. Probably I'm not the best judge, given my limited experience and photographic knowledge, but I cannot help myself not disagreeing with the comments regarding the pswork. I think the subtle halo around his head separates him from the background, like in a surrealist movie, and creates an illusion of space-time distorsion. If you would darken the background (besides the fact that this is a very common thing to do, I myself do it often, not knowing better...), as someone suggests, the viewer would miss precious details of the dynamic and blurred environment, that makes a strong contrast with the unicity of the boy. Well, I promiss not to come back :) Cheers, S.

I am not usually a great fan of people and street photography but it's photos like these that I come across now and then that impress me so much. The boy looks like he could be a character from a Charles Dickens novel, if you ignore the coke. The dog on his shoulder makes him even more of a 'character'. I wish the boy were a little more part of the scene and the halo etc were a little less. I do like the effects, but only wish it was a tad less.

Really hideous manipulation. Regardless of the equipment and luxury of digital doodahderry, I feel that you have to make the image work when you make the exposure and doctoring it afterward often only brings out conceptual flaws that need to be addressed through means other than sitting at a keyboard working the photoshop sliders. Does this sound harsh? Maybe, but this could have been a good image with a bit more CAMERA work.

Fantastica captura!!

Thank you everyone for your comments, much appreciated.

 

Sabina, not at all, feel free to come back anytime you like =)

 

Marc, you may be right about the exaggerated drawing feeling as I tend to get carried away sometimes over the board with PS manipulations. I'm uploading an unmanipulated version now for those of you more 'fundamentalist' folks.

 

Kent, I decided to darken the background because it looked too busy as you noticed yourself, and as you may see in this version I'm uploading now.

 

Mr. Falkenstein, firstly let me tell you that I'm a big fan of the comments you deliver in PN; today was my lucky day though [lol]. Now seriously, I understand you are against photo manipulations. I agree with you when you say that the camera should do most of the job, but in my point of view when it doesn't, then I see nothing wrong about using PS to correct/enhance it and/or to develop it further turning it into a personal creation. My camera is mostly a digital point-and-shoot with a powerful zoom, which I use to try to take unnoticed photos like this one. Because of the limitations of my camera, it happens often that I can't have good enough results in getting the desired DOF and/or exposure. So I play around in PS and make extensive use of it, and I don't hide it. For me what it matters is the final outcome, no matter how it was obtained. IMO, PS is one of the tools of photography as it used to be (still is) the conventional dark room, but now perhaps with far more capabilities and easiness of use. I'm just a beginner and I respect and welcome your view on the subject, but maybe precisely because of that fact I'm more open to new things and possibilities on photography. As far as I know, there were discussions in the past as to if colour photography wouldn't be an outrage to real photography, or even if digital photography could be considered as such. For me, registering the image in the camera and working it in PS are both sides of the same coin. Some may like the result, some don't, but that also happens with the 'un-manipulated shots'. I am learning and really welcome any advice anyone may have to give me, so perhaps you could develop what you mean by "conceptual flaws" in this photo, so that I can try to improve my camera working skills as well.

 

grande foto, grande espressivita' complimenti!!!

Great captured Alexandre,well done

 

regards Shuki

"I'm uploading an unmanipulated version now for those of you more 'fundamentalist' folks."

 

Ok, thanks. I definately enjoyed it better than the original post. BUT... I want to tell you thatI am not, by any means, a "fundamentalist" - at least if you mean by that "a person who dislikes post-processing via PShop"...:-)

 

Let me clarify my views a little, for you if you wish to think about this a little further, and for me, in the sense I don't want to seem to be what I'm not...:-)

 

I use PS A LOT, and probably spend more time at the keyboard than you or many other folks here do. But... I just spend my computer time looking for different things. I am used to distinguish 2 major directions for PS works: 1) Realistic, 2) Non-realistic. Non-realistic works could be 2a) Works with filters etc meant to combine graphic arts with photography, or 2b) Montages - merging or combining several pictures.

 

According to this classification, your manipulation here suggests that the outcome belongs to Category 2a).

 

Did you want to make this look somehow like a painting ? Yes ? Then it's confirmed - 2a. Or perhaps you just wanted to darken the background but keep the image realistic enough ? If so, then we are in category one in terms of intend - and you may have slipped into category 2a) when you over-manipulated this image. What matters first is your intention. What matters after is whether this intention made sense or not given the nature of the subject matter. Finally, what will matter too is the quality of the execution: whether it fits your intention or not.

 

You wrote: "Kent, I decided to darken the background because it looked too busy as you noticed yourself, and as you may see in this version I'm uploading now."

 

According to this, your aim was realism, and your goal was simply to make the subject stand out from the background. That's category 1. And therefore, I would conclude that you failed, because this picture now looks like a category 2a artwork.

 

"I see nothing wrong about using PS to correct/enhance it and/or to develop it further turning it into a personal creation."

 

Agreed, as far as I am concerned. PROVIDED your PS work makes sense and is well carried out. Here, it isn't well done. And (IMO) this is not a subjective statement - although people may disagree of course.

 

"For me what it matters is the final outcome, no matter how it was obtained."

 

I'm ok with that too - but then, final oucome has to be clean and neatly done. I'd say that about 80 to 90% of PS works uploaded to PNet are sloppy. This, imo, belongs to the sloppy PS work category. :-) To isolate the subject better was possible. If you like, I could give it a try - if your aim was indeed realism. Regards.

Well Alexandre, your image is getting a lively discussion, which is excellent and shows that ALL of us have a basic interest in an image that shows potential. I too, use point and shoot cameras, often from junk stores that I have bought for almost nothing only minutes before. (In most cases, the battery and the film costs me several times more than the camera itself). Some of the images in my folders were taken with a very slow sub-1 megapixel Kodak which usually runs out of battery power in about an hour. I think the basic commentary here hovers around the basic image as taken and what was done to it. Often the manipulation starts to override the image itself. In this case I feel it is a distraction and instead of looking at the actual image I keep looking at the adjustments. I strongly recommend that you NOT worry about the way the camera takes an image, but integrate your photographic style with the camera's limitations, and take advantage of them.

Mister Marc G assumes that the two categories defined by him are exhaustive, covering the entire spectrum of possibilities, and thinks that his opinions are not subjective, but expressing an almost universally objective truth. Also, he thinks that 80 or 90 percent of the psworked pics on PN are sloppy. I'm sorry to find out he thinks so low about PN. By the way, such intolerance is often seen in fundamentalists... Regards, S.

 

 

Great image. Composition is flawless and B&W work full of tones of grey. Beautiful work.

Now, on manipulation... Who can forget that we manipulate the reality continuously whenever we decide to take a photo?

Do we not choose a particular lens?

And a specific type of film with particularities such as its graininess, latitude or sensibility?

Do we, even, apply, sometimes, a filter?

And then, do we not decide what diafragm to use in order to control DOF?

What happens in the darkroom? Do we use the zones techniques? Do we choose the paper in which to print?

Oh! Come on! Be a little bit less puritans about we do and what we cannot do!

I have, however, to agree with the remarks regarding the sloppiness of most of the PS manipulations in PN. I am one of the sloppiest of all. I have to confess, always looking to the opportunity to take serious teaching on the matter.

Alexandre, This is a wonderful street portrait, and the boy is perfectly placed in the frame. As already remarked, the background is too busy. But the PS manipulations here have only made the problem worse, I think. I agree that PS is just as much as part of the process of producing a digital image as the wet darkroom was to producing a traditional B&W print (and lots of manipulation went on in the wet darkroom, too). But here the image just looks too unnatural, and the fundamental problem is that this distracts us from appreciating it. For instance, my eyes should be settling on the boy's eyes and face, but instead I keep being drawn up to the strange boundary between his head and the background. I suggest you just use the original image, without burning in the background at all. Otherwise, since this boy must be performing on the street regularly, you can find him again and reshoot.

Alexandre, I like your original shot more than the image uploaded. Neverthelass, this a very good capture of street scene.

Marc, I don't really like to put things in categories, and so I usually don't use PS with some defined intention. It often happens to me that while experimenting, sometimes the final thing ends up far from reality and others with minimal changes. Perhaps when my still rather basic PS skills will be more developed, then I can think more objectively what my intentions are before starting working with an image. Until then I should continue my sloppy efforts trying to make them look not so sloppy next times. I would appreciate very much if you could give it a try showing your version and if it's not too much trouble to ask, the technique you've used. Cheers!

 

Alberto, you are very right in the points you've made. I guess it's just a matter of time for the older photography conservatives to finally accept that photography is in constant evolution, as everything else in life. Thanks for leaving your points of view.

 

Chris, I agree that it got perhaps too unreal. As I said before, I often get carried away when working in PS and end up overdoing things due to constant experimenting. As for re-shooting this boy again, it won't be so easy since I'm now living 3000km away from him, but I'll definitely give it a try in a future opportunity=)

 

AK, thanks for viewing and commenting.

 

Alexandre, I liked this image very much, but when I saw the original, I liked that even more! The realism of the street scene is powerful. Despite a busy background, I am still drawn to the boy and his dog.

I do, however, understand Marc G's view. I too am very guilty of PS'ing to death some of my photos ;) Sabine, I feel that calling Marc a fundamentalist is a bit extreme. A purist rather than a puritan is probably more accurate :)

Mark :]

I was just rephrasing an expression used before, during the comments. If you read them all, you will see what I mean :) I can see both Alex's latest pics are provoking pretty heated arguments. Seems to me like people are in need of some disputes, lately... just hope that there are no personal items involved in the matters, in a clandestine way. Cheers, S.