smokin-0798 ---(for John Galyon)

Admit it: this is the most amazing self portrait you have ever

seen.

Good idea, and nice composition. I really like it. However, I'd say there just a little bit too much of smoke. I mean, the smoke is cool, but I wish I could see the face a little bit more. Cool anyway

I am not sure what you are smoking Doug, Its a interesting portrait, but not the best.Thanks for posting it.

The amount of smoke is perfect and what you are smoking looks like the weeds my friends and I use to smoke in the woods when we were kids. Wonderful potfolio and webpage.

love it... but now i need splif before going to bed. thanks anyway

It was all legal, Michael. I promise.

 

Here, with various amounts of smoke, is a montage for you both.

 

You know....For the den.

Allan and Juan, thanks. And I promise, the prop was 100% tobacco, and was purchased legally from a local tobacconist.

Allan and Juan, you can use the montage for your wall, too.

 

:-)

I couldn't believe this was real when I first saw it. Great work, Doug.

 

--Lannie

Hey Doug, it's good to see you back posting again. I like this and prefer it most of the four. There's just enough of your features revealed and looks all consuming. There is an eerie link between the glow in the cig and on your throat - hope it's not all that consuming.

"Smoke gets in our eyes" ;-) Beautiful image

Thank you Hanna. It's a periodic vice. Once a week, at most. Jesper, thanks.

Aside from it being an unusual photograph, I find it uninteresting. the background LOOKS fake, whether or not it really is I don't know. I think the red triangle which I finally figured out was the man's neck draws attention to a portion of the image which I doubt was intended.

 

Maybe photographing smoke just released from the subject's mouth and nose is difficult, I don't know as, I have never tried it, but I for one am not impressed. I wouldn't hang it on my wall. Maybe it needs a smoke ring or something.

 

Willie the Cropper

Doug, this is a selfportrait of yourself,wright?(the stance mistake is on purpose) so how can you say that "this is the most amazing self-portrait I have ever seen", you are being subjective. I don't see the artistic side of this photo, it's just a lot of smoke and a hard to distinquish face, i'm not trying to find a detail that i don't like it's just that the whole photo has been made in a hurry turning out like this, the darkened selection is too visible...

 

i can't really say where the place for this photo is...maybe on a "stop smoking campaign" poster, i have my experience with capturing smoke and in my oppinion this photo could have been done much better.

This is one of those times when the sheer dramatic impact of a photograph overwhelms any minor quibbles we may have with petty details. I will weigh in on the side of those for whom this is the most amazing self-portrait of all time.

 

I like the near total monotone of the smoke, background and face, with the small red triangle of the neck and the red circle of the cigar each struggling to emerge from the 12% gray (give or take a few percent) of the rest of the photograph. The little bit of reddish neck tells me there is a person trying to emerge from the haze, and I think anchors the underlying drama and meaning of the shot. My only quibble is the blue shirt - I'd like to see that toned down; it would have been good to put the model in a gray shirt instead.

 

I would put this in my den, printed large (if, of course, I had a den).

I agree with Bogdan, it could have been done better. However, had I waited for the better opportunity to come along, it wouldn't exist at all. I made the right choice in making the picture. That it would become a POW was nowhere present in my mind.

 

It's interesting how we try to put this photo in its place. Setting aside the joke about hanging in the den, we want to categorize it, and by so doing understand its meaning. As a portrait, it's not very pretty, but as a stop-smoking advertisement, suddenly it is more acceptable.

 

No question, this is not a finely crafted, meticulous kind of photo. The mood and atmosphere are all more important than most of the finer points of detail.

 

I had imagined this picture for several weeks before shooting it. The opportunity came when I was visiting my smoking buddies at their apartment, and I realized I might be able to make it. My light source was a floor lamp to my left. You can see how it burns out the wall, then falls quickly into black. The next closest light was on the other side of the room, too far to provide any fill. Flash was out of the question as it would ruin the ambience. The camera was a Sony Mavica MCV-CD500, I think the ISO was set to 400. I didn?t care about shadow detail. That was Ansel Adams bag to carry. Not mine--although I pick it up from time to time.

 

In this shot, the camera was held in my right hand, my thumb on the shutter release. Working with a digital camera, with auto focus and being able to evaluate each shot on the LCD, was a big help. My friends had no idea what I was doing.

I would disagree with anyone claiming it as an impromptu portrait because I had imagined it for a couple weeks prior to creating it. It was, by all means, a thoughtful process. Although I didn't plan it for that particular time or location, I recognized that that time and location would work. Yes, the result is messy, but that's because my life is messy, and therefore the picture is a success. Not all of us ride around in suits of gleaming armor, even in our imaginations.

 

The attached image (above)is what came out of the camera. Perhaps a little later I can post a contact sheet.

When I first saw the thumbnail for this picture, I thought it was some heavenly body!

I think it's a cool shot. The effects the smoke has in obscuring the face are very nice. Only part that I might have touched up would have been to make all of the neck black rather than have the spot of red flesh.

As usual, the original 'vision' or 'version' or 'concept' is so much better than the posted final over worked, worked over final post. However the right hand side could be brought down at least step or two, or a border added to contain the image. The smoke is well contained within the original frame.

 

I've never really understood why photographers don't trust their original vision. It is right there in the viewfinder for them to see.

 

And, yes, it is a pretty good photo, but I have seen some other self-portraits that leave this in the dust, and they don't use a smokescreen for obscuration.

 

You might want to check with Al Kaplan on self-portrait techniques, he has got it down pat.

"I have seen some other self-portraits that leave this in the dust, and they don't use a smokescreen for obscuration."

 

Ian, I don' think that this should be evaluated by the usual criteria of self-portraiture, or any kind of portraiture. Doug is playing by his own rules in a very unique creation that really defies categorization and evaluation. Anyone who has followed Doug on this site knows that his photographic skills are matched by his humor, and there is an element of humor in the use of smoke in this picture. The point of the smoke is not darkening or hiding, but surprise, in my opinion. It takes the mind a moment to recognize that one is even seeing a human being at all. The version at top right shows this most clearly. This is not in any sense a documentary capture, and so the idea of going with the original framing likewise seems irrelevant. This is a curious kind of artistic creation, perhaps even anti-artistic in the sense of its repudiation of the usual criteria for what makes good photography. Comparing it to Kaplan's work or to anybody else's is a waste of time. This is vintage Doug at his playful best, creating a unique and memorable image, capable of being appreciated on a number of levels, but not by the usual criteria.

 

--Lannie

"I've never really understood why photographers don't trust their original vision. It is right there in the viewfinder for them to see." --Ian McEachern

 

This was not shot through a viewfinder, Ian. Doug held the camera out and snapped frame after frame with his thumb. Doug's vision was in his mind, not in the viewfinder, and cropping and some post-processing were necessary to bring that vision to reality.

 

It's different. I like it.

 

--Lannie

If I may squeeze my unprofessional, humble opinion, through the loud comments of the giant photographers...This is a great photograph. The angle from which it is shot makes me think of someone standing at the bottom of a mountain loooking at the foggy peak. I like "the red triangle" because in my opinion it balances out the red in the cigar. Visually I am pleased by the softness of the smoke but mentally I am reminded of the tabacco smell of a classic man and the aura of mistery that surrounds the cigar smoking, tabacco smelling men I've met. So, if I may congratulate you Mr. Burgess: well done!

Well, I was all set this morning to respond to Ian's comment when I saw Lannie's slip in there ahead of me, and so I decided to bask in their glory for a little while. Thanks Lannie.

 

I respect full frame shooting, recognizing Ian as perhaps the best I?ve ever seen on photonet, however, I tend to agree with Rob,, and so haven't found a strong enough reason to bind myself to the aspect ratio of whatever camera I'm using. (I've been married for 17 years, so I'm tied down enough already) The truth is, though, that I tend to vacillate with cropping, favoring one kind of crop at one point in time, then favoring a different kind of crop later. Sometimes I'll make a crop based more on the aspect ratio of the handiest frame. This doesn?t make me a bad person. It doesn?t even make me a bad photographer.

 

Sometimes, a picture has one, and only one, crop, but you have to admit there are other times when a crop one way looks only slightly better than a crop the other way, or looks neither better nor worse, but rather makes a different emphasis.

 

In the end, it's only natural that we favor images based on our own aesthetics. Ian, being a consummate full frame shooter, does not surprise us in favoring the uncropped version, despite the fact that the subject occupies less than half the frame. As I posted it, the unused portion of the frame is reduced, thereby making the crop more economical (and vertical). The difference between the two, in my opinion, is not too significant, and, though cropping discussions are interesting, they reach a point where we, as creative people, would benefit more in the pursuit of other issues.

 

What's important about the two extremes offered by Ian and Rob is that all of us should trust our original visions, but we should temper them with the freedom to change that vision if we feel so moved. Ian, I dearly hope that you haven't discarded fascinating photography because it didn't crop full out on the negative.

 

Lannie, I appreciate your comments. The occasional disregard of the usual criteria by which we judge our imagery is good, but better still, that we suspend it when judging the photography of others, trying instead to determine what the photograph(er) is trying to say.

 

Ian, many of the self-portraits of Al Kaplan were not, in my opinion, portraits so much as they were records of being at a certain place at a certain time. In a few of them, I think I really saw Al Kaplan, but in most, I recognized him as merely the guy at the other end of a camera. Yes, smoke is used here to obscure, but not in the deceptive sense of your description. Think of it more as a protective obscuration. There are aspects of my personality that I am not willing to face myself, let alone reveal to the world.

 

Diana, I like how you see this. I think, in self-portraiture, our goals can be divided: Do we attempt to portray ourselves as we really are, or do we strive to portray ourselves as we wish we were. I suppose the feeling of looking up at the foggy peak hints at some success on my part in portraying myself as I wish I was.

 

Megan, I like your sense of scale.

Below (or above, or wherever) is the contact sheet, showing all my various attempts at "cool". The one with two red dots is the POW. Those with one red dot are on the 4 image grid uploaded before it was POW'd. The enlargement at the bottom is the 10x13 crop of the POW that I printed about a month ago, 10x13 being a standard dimension selected more on the economics of framing than much else.

Aesthetically, it may not be the best. But you have to admit it holds interest and keeps the eye moving. Being a self-portrait adds to it for it's originality