Untitled

i think that the b/w version looks a bit more authentic than the

original color picture. please view in large

I hope that if they would compete one day in the Dakar rally, they remember that bringing along only a navigator is also an option...

 

In this case I think I would have prefered a bit more surroundings, to give the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere more promenence. Still, great shot.

Hugo

 

To me, this has just the right amount of surroundings, to show the desolate place and the desperate need to get the ride to where ever they are going. The B&W approach manages to add something special to the atmosphere, as if it would underline the texturelike amount of the details and things on the side of the car. Very fine and interesting work!

 

Alpo

Wonderfull!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I bet, it looks much more interesting in the color.....b/w looses some visual information. Wonder, how did they get up there :) Looks very funny!

Great photo!!!!

Wonderful and interesting. Nicely captured. Dan

thank you for the comments.

 

hugo, i will insert two shots of the same truck taken a bit later, when the truck was farther away

and a second one still farther away

Grate shot! It made me smile

I like this one better than your later posting (smaller car and more space) because I can see individual faces better in this picture. But I like the thicker (?) tone in your first attachment, too. Great work!

Wonderful captured very original image Dieter,compliments,Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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If I guess how many people are on this truck do I win a lolipop?

It is actually a very fascinating photo and well excuted too. I would, however, like to see some more detail in the dark top portion.

Dieter, can you tell us the story behind this shot?

Congrats on POW and also a very good portfolio.

Simply wonderful! I don't usually comment on the POW, but this is one of the most memorable photos I have seen in a long time - the story of so many lives compressed into one single image. I would also like to see the color version for comparison, but the b&w is great regardless!

This is a fantastic image IMO which engenders wonderment, where are these people going, where have they come from? The surroundings tell us very little. How did they manage to load all that stuff on to the truck? It reminds me of the images created at the time of the exodus from the American prairies in the mid 30's of vehicles loaded with everything including the kitchen sink. The hands raised by the passengers suggest the spines of a hedgehog or porcupine racing through the desert. This is a very special photograph in my view.

Wow! That's amazing. It holds so many stories I'd love to hear, but never will. It evokes

much wonder, for me. Fantastic!

Amazing Capture Dieter -- the blended foreground and background and subtle horizon line

isolate the truck and passengers which further details an incredible story. Congrats, john mac

As I looked at this and read some of the other comments here, I wondered if I am just too hard on peoples' photos, but then I realized that I am no harder on theirs than I am my own!

 

Here, we have a scene that I know I have viewed in several documentaries and magazines, but one that is interesting and still evokes many feelings to a westerner. This photo is well designed and probably has the potential to be very goodt, but I suspect that the post processing was just not attended to as well as it could have been.

 

My main problem with the image is that the very thing that makes it all the more "dangerous" and interesting to me, the people, are relegated to almost unrecognizable form--more "stuff" on the truck instead of precarious human cargo. Yes, that is somewhat the point, from our Western perspective. One might even argue that the blending of all the people also harkens to the "loss of individuality". If that is the maker's intent, then maybe this is the right presentation.

 

For me, tho, I would prefer to have seen the individuals just as I see the individual bags piled on to precarious heights. Now, there just ssems to be a black cap or tarp on the top of the pile--the people have been treated differently than the baggage, probably not the point here! I think this treatment of the people probably diminishes this photo against the many others out there of similar subjects. This is a shame, as this is so well designed otherwise.

 

I read at the top here, this was originally a color photo. I don't see this other version in Dieter's portfolio, but there is another shot with a similar subject. In that shot, we can see the many different tones and variations in the passenger clothing, which is all missing here as they blend into one another. What I am left with here is the feeling that a conversion to black and white was made with attention to the overall tonality and with no attention to where the people fell. Overall, the tonality is wonderful, but I think the people deserve a separate b/w conversion, some dodging and/or some other effort applied to separate this "cargo" into individual elements.

Angle is good, picture is very evocative. Nice POW. That said, I've got to observe that the people are indeed a quite dark mass at the top, and that a little more details would have been better. From what I understand, these people's clothes were originally darker than their bags, and I suppose you did a fairly straight forwards conversion to b&w. Idelly, I suppose you could have - and to me "should" have - worked on a separate layer for these people at the top, using channel mixer or individual channels in order to bring up some details in the darker areas. Still, nice shot. Merry Xmas to all.

Wow...where do I start. This image has an incredible documentary value. It's an image of a pile of things on top of which it's a pile of people and if I couldn't see the wheels I would not know they?re on a truck. First thought make me think refugees. And as I sip from my $5 cup of Starbucks it occurs to me that perhaps these people are moving to another region, all sharing one truck and that the pile they're sitting on represents all their belongings. That's all they have. Yet they?re waving (perhaps to a stranger photographer) and since their mouths are covered I can only guess some of them are smiling. Having grown in a developing country I am very familiar to this behavior...everything is used at its maximum capacity, nothing is ever wasted, everything is reused, and I am instantly reminded that with the price of my cup of coffee I could literally buy food for a family of four for an entire week. So I am touched by this image and it?s very evoking, documentary power.

Now on a technical side, I appreciate the black and white very much as I think it's meant to help focus on the substance and message of the image. While this image is already difficult to just glance at and requires detailed observation already, I think the color version would bring a bit too much detail. I think the elf who chose this picture made a very good point: the concentration of things and people against the open desert makes for a very unique contrast of elements. If you look at the enlarged version you will notice that the reason to top of the pile is dark is because everybody is wearing black, exposing only their eyes.

I might have spent some time with a layer mask to shift local contrast in an effort to bring out the detail in the people on that truck (in fact, I did just that).

It's a very interesting image, providing plenty to think about. I'd like to see the color version, which probably has the potential to yield more local contrast in a monochrome conversion than this jpg did. Those adjustments might make the people stand out from the cargo a little more... t

I have no contribution to what comes to the minds of Americans when looking at this

photo from another World region. I find it way more interesting to look at what the elves

and Dieter have put in front of our eyes.

 

I believe that the first message we learn is the message of travel, which is indicated by the

wheel tracks in the foreground of the lower left. A track that seems to lead nowhere, cut

by the frame, but with a view of endless dunes.

 

The overloaded lorry, filled beyond its limits by people and packages and one single visible

item of value: a bicycle hanging behind the lorry, is of course the central object. It casts a

long, deep black shadow telling the viewer that one travels early or late in the day to

protect passengers against the heat of the sun. It is also the heat of the sun that explains

the very realistic image of black clothing of the passengers.

 

The image should be looked at in large format for all to see that the passengers are

individual human beings and not merged in a darkness that prevent us from

distinguishing them. The messages they send us by their eyes , as Diana mentions , and

especially by the waving hands, as Joseph mentions, are strong photographical symbols of

communication.

 

I find the POW exceptionally good in its present version, in B/W. The only critic I could

make would be a slight weakness due to sharpening or B/W conversion which can be

observed (in enlargement) all around the lorry.

hi you all,

i am just back from a short christmas holiday to find that this picture has been chosen as pow. i have only quickly scanned the comments - i shall read them more carefully a bit later. therefore only a quick response to some of the questions.

the original is of course a color photo, you can find it in my folder "favorites". sorry i should have posted it, when i did submit this b/w version. i fully accept mona's criticism concerning the quality of the b/w conversion,one can certianly do much better. concerning the point that the faces are barely recognizable, you cannot have it both ways, either the truck in the desert surrounding or the faces, at least not with less than 1000 points. i have other shots of this scene where the truck is further away so that you see more of the desert, and i can blow up the truck to make peaople more recognizable.

 

now to the situation. we encountered the truck in the tenere desert in niger. they were having a break so we could shake hands with some of them before they climbed up again (which was worth seeing in its own right). as the truck slowly moved away many of them kept waving hands.

 

who are these people? in this case they were touareg mostly living in the eastern part of niger, the air mountains (if there is special interest i could tell more about the present situation there). many of them use the opportunity to work in libya for several months. the people seen on the photographe are on their way home apparently in rather high spirits anticipating return to their families with some money in their pockets. transport across more than a thousand miles of sheer desert is by these heavily loaded mercedes trucks. though i saw quite a few of them, this one was indeed spectacular