Visiting winter

I just shake my head when I see pictures like that. This is so tecnically brilliant without overdoing anything.

Flawless work !!!

You are always suprised me.

Your picture a book of fairy-tale.

Nice one...

(Actually I am raving because of the impact of this one...) This is one more genuine masterpiece from you! Straight into my wall and quickly. :-)

This comment could be interpreted so, that I really love this image.

Alpo

Absolutely beautiful - the winding tracks and the rolling hills are just wonderful.

To be the first to contribute a slightly nitpicky comment (sorry) you might note that the shadows of the trees are a bit softer, and more blue in tone, than the shadow of the man, and the fore/midground snow seems very slightly warmer than the hills - this could be my monitor deceiving me as well. I think it's a wonderfully charming picture, though - visually arresting and appealing to the imagination.

Please note the following:

• This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.
• Discussion of photo.net policy, including the choice of Photograph of the Week should not take place here, but in the Help & Questions Forum.
• The About Photograph of the Week page tells you more about this feature of photo.net.
• Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

I like this image because it is different. However, it does not look real; or at least, staged. The mountains/hills do not look real. A person would not normally walk in a crooked manner. The balloon has no practical purpose. It is a fun image, but can't be taken seriously.

I was so pleased to see this surreal image here this week that I felt I must comment immediately. Ceslovas, you capture what is best about surrealistic art. I spent the past half hour looking with wonder at your wonderful portfolio. As usual, the elves don't choose the best of the artist's work to bring up for discussion on POW, however this is more or less typical of what you offer. (In my view, the photo titled "Solaris" is the best.)

I don't pretend to know how you achieve these wonderful works, but I do like what I see. Also, I dont pretend to fully understand the art, but it is most enjoyable. I can see little that I could improve by cropping or other changes in this image. At first, I thought the sky tilted a little to the right, but I have satisfyied myself that this is not so. Generally, your skies are about the main attraction in your works, and me being a cloud buff, became more interested in them than the rest of your pictures.

If I was to change anything about this picture, it would be the pinkish cast given the snow covered forground. it seems to stop before reaching the hills in the background. I might try a similar color or possibly a shade darker for those background hills.

Congratulations on being the chosen one for this week!

Willie the Cropper

I am very pleased and the same time surprised (knowing the controversy among the photographers about this kind of images) this image was selected as POW.
I was thinking here, I should write some short story-comment on the image.
One winter day, sitting at home, I started thinking of how year after year our winters were getting milder and milder (that winter, in the middle of january there was no snow at all). I started comparing winters in my childhood, when we used to have snowbanks reaching higher than knees, ice hockey, skiing and many other winter activities with my friends..Anyway, some sort of panic suddenly appeared. I thought, what if this is it.. no more real winter.. Luckily in some week it 'arrived'. Still being under that pressure, I started running around with my camera shooting every possible snow hump :)
'Visiting winter' is my tribute to the season- white, cold, calm, slippy, melancholic, joyful..

"A person would not normally walk in a crooked manner." Unless the guy is drunk... ;-) I think that in this case that's the value of the image, with a surreal touch, making every viewer wonder why this or that is composed in such a way, etc.

A viewer might guess that the image was, at least, staged in a real scenario. Although that, photography is still valid to express an idea, a feeling or just share an imaginative concept with others, in whatever manner the photographer consider it valid.

Thank you Nestor. I used 4 photos for this image. You have to admit that it would be difficult to make a sigle shot photo fo such a composition. I really didn't mean to occupy some real photographs place in some 'charts', but photo.net does have digital alternation and fine art categories..
Thinking otherwise what is real photography nowadays? Is pinhole real photography? HDR ? Unnatural compositions-scenes with models? ND filters and so on..

Ceslovas, thanks for your answer. From the very first moment of photography's history and by definition, a photo is not reality, but just a cut-off from the real world. That's was the central point of Susan Sontag's argument considering photography a surrealistic media.

The central point here is that the image looks quite believable as a real photographed scene - that speaks loud about your digital editing skills. The "unreality" it's not as obvious as in your other images. And that's exactly what frustrate me: the lack of "obviousness", and not the fact that it's a composite. The illusion of thinking for a little while that such a scenario could have ever exist but it didn't...

What really matters at the end of the day, is the viewer's personal approach to the subject, i.e. a "subjective" one.

to the artist, this is an interesting graphic composite image cleanly constructed, but as a photograph, I feel it falls short. While the image was indeed constructed from four separate photographs as the artist freely admits (thank you Ceslovas!), these individual elements by themselves are unremarkable and appear, at least to me, not to have presented much challenge nor have broken any new ground. The combination of these elements, on the other hand, does present an interesting and fun, albeit unreal, image.

I can see where those who enjoy constructed images would find this an appealing work; for those of us who prefer more empahsis on "in camera" results there would be a separation along this path. Perhaps that is why many responders, and the POW Elves, found this particular composite to be a good choice for this forum: it should foster quite a bit of discussion. Regards.