STEPPE XI - BW version

Tonight I'm quite bored, so, I started to play with my photos, this is

a conversion to BW of an old shot (see STEPPE XI), of course I do

prefer the BW...

Una foto llena de dinamismo. Uno casi puede sentir el viento. Un saludo.

This is beautiful , I love the mood and motion in this photo

I, too, like the movement you've suggested here, also the mood. It feels very theatrical and dramatic, the sense of passion being unleashed. I love the way the highlights accentuate the stalks and the menacing sky in the background just adds to the unfolding drama. In many ways, the background seems to echo the foreground in its composition and movement, which ties the photo together beautifully.

Ufff... esta llena de vida, de movimiento y el BN me encanta.

articulate mixture of sharp and blurred.

Qué real!!!!... da frio!!!..... estupenda Carlos.

I like what Fred says above regarding passion being unleashed. It is true that your images are rarely static, even the architectural shots, in the sense that they are endowed with dynamics and they convey a feeling. I don't know what you did to this if anything, but it's really beautiful.

 

Carlo, with your passion for structure, flow and movement, you really should do more figure studies ...there is no better and more graceful piece of architecture than the human body.

Great dynamics here. I like the point of view and the foreground-background powerful composition. Regards, Stamoulis.

Thank you to all of you my friends, for your encouraging comments on this humble work, I really love this image for deep reasons beyond the mere photographic issue.

 

John, I am thinking -and planning- a series made in my home, kind a studio, following the concept that you've described above, the human body and its architectural richness. I must adjust some details -the use of my new camera among others- and it will be ready before Christmas. Hope it. Thank you very much John.

 

Fred, what happen with your last comment? why you've erased it? I must confess that it was extremely interesting deserving a well meditated answer, for sure John agree with me.

You know why? because you are touching-disturbing-revealing the medulla of the true photography. Such an issue, don't you?

I was worried about assuming too much on your behalf and that my words could be taken the wrong way. I wanted to think more about it. I was considering John's suggestion that you do some studies of the human form, architecturally, and musing that I'm not sure that kind of formal approach to human beings would work for you, since I see such humanity in your photos in general and in your people photos in particular. While I have seen many a figure study executed beautifully, I often find the kind of passion you put into your work missing in nude studies. For me, your work is about content and substance as much as form. The emotional and psychological connection of photographer to subject which I so often find in your work and appreciate about it might get lost in a more architectural approach to human beings. The photo you've presented here seems to me the opposite of architectural, being more insubstantial, more fleeting, evocative, and of the spirit rather than the body.

I find a very personal connection from you as a photographer in THIS approach and THIS approach and wonder what draw an architectural approach would have. But then again, I look at the other photos in your folder DESAPARECIDOS and do see an architectural sense in them.

To expand a little on my remark above, Carlos ‘s architectural shots do not satisfy themselves with mere geometrics. They always include a play of light and shadow which are elements that move and flow in permanence, thus creating the illusion of a moment caught in time. It is likewise for the figure studies/glamour shots he has shown us. Even in the photos of a figure lying down that are seemingly immobile, the pose is usually such that it implies it has been stopped momentarily.

 

We all know since school days that nothing is static in the universe, right up to the sub particles that create the atom. If we ever get this thing to work in Cern and we are not blown up in the process, we may even manage to prove it one day ! In the meantime, Carlo reminds us of the flow of nature, whether it is in the movement of a cloud, that of a field of wheat as above or in the never ending changes that occur in the human figure. The emotional component that both Fred and I refer to is what makes his contribution so personal. That is why I would like to have his vision furthered in this area.

 

Fred, John, your points of view are so rich and generous. You are two talented artists so different one from the other, not only different in style, but in the way you observe the surrounding world, and the consequent interpretation you construct about this world. Never the less, sometimes both of you arrives to a common point; a photographer should have confidence in his own instinct, as far as I can see this statement strongly outcrop as a conclusion from your comments done above.

 

And I try to do it, when I submerge my gaze in the viewfinder, automatically I am transported to a different universe made of silence and light, I mean, the pure scene captured through it. I am hidden, my viewfinder is my shelter, nobody can touch me, nobody knows where I am. I am an observer, a secret one. Imagination take control, and sometimes -few times- the image captured has a coincidence with the scene I was exploring through the VF. What a hell I mean?

 

Doesn't matter what kind of subject one is trying to capture; nudes, architecture, landscapes, what else, because the whole pack of photographs will be imbued with the interpretation of the photographer, consciously or not, successful or not. And I suppose this is an universal rule about every artistic activity. That's the clue, our "signature" is an inevitable reality.

 

One delightful night of the last july, dinning at John home in Hydra, someone asked me: Carlos, tell me, what subjects you like to photograph?

Such a simple and good question, is more easy to say what I don't like, but generally I should say that I love to photograph what I feel as a mystery in some unexplainable way. Then, I like to photograph questions, or subjects provoking questions.

 

For example, Fred remind me "The Interrogatory" from my folder "DESAPARECIDOS", let me tell you that this series was the most hardest and painful work of my life. I guess you know a bit of the dark recent history of my country, then you know the horrible meaning of the term "Desaparecidos" (missing, disappeared), or what I try to say with the image of "The Interrogatory".

 

"Desaparecidos" is a series plenty of flaws, I know, but I never mind, I was not looking for academic perfection, I was trying to transmit the most deep horror that we've experienced in the 70's, and how I still missing my beloved friends, tortured and murdered under the most heavy and cruel criminal hatred conceivable. Can you see?

 

Of course there is architecture in there, the architecture of a suffering human body, the architecture of the defenseless waiting the death, nudity exposed to the hate. We are fragile matter, but at the same time strong enough to produce pain and death. All in the same package for the same price.

 

Can you imagine the result of my new project about nudity under the light of this cosmos? The miraculous human body architecture observed as a relevant fiber of the love of someone. Or the hate.

 

Will be technical imperfections? Hundreds

 

Defects and broken rules? Thousands

 

I only wish that my lack of skills could be defeated by the sensibility.

 

But, beyond the pure science, there are not miracles without feelings, emotions, and a strong earthquake from time to time. Don't you?

 

 

 

 

"Doesn't matter what kind of subject one is trying to capture; nudes, architecture, landscapes, what else, because the whole pack of photographs will be imbued with the interpretation of the photographer, consciously or not, successful or not. And I suppose this is an universal rule about every artistic activity. That's the clue, our "signature" is an inevitable reality."

 

Your words often read like poetry and your sensitivity and passion come through in so much of your work.

 

Don't shortchange yourself in terms of your ability to imbue your photos with something personal. There are many good photographers who are not able to do that. Whether they are artists or not is a debate not worth having here, although we might sometime. But some are very good photographers, ones I respect and whose technical ability I admire. However, their being is often missing from their photos and that is something that does not happen with you. You are able to let go and give of yourself, exposing something. Not all can or even want to do that.

 

Yes, naturally, each photo will come from the perspective of the photographer and, on that level, it will maintain his or her stamp. But simply a perspective and even a style does not always give us a glimpse of them, it just portrays a generic individuality more than a personal one. Your photos are personal and they do stand out from the crowd.

My friend, you bring to me the wind and the parfume of the nature.

Thank you...

 

Eli

wind of romance, cheers Jana

It is the spirit of the wind blowing, and winding, calling nature shrubs to fly and connect to the sky...;-))

 

Beautiful, delicate, spiritual ,well composed..

Me gusta! puede sentirse. Regards.

Simple and beautiful.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2009, Carlos!

May Light and Love follow you everywhere!! Warm regards, Dimitris.

I've already commented on this poto ...

 

A very Happy Chrsitmas and New Year my friend. John

Dear Carlos! I've visited this image many times. I was so moved by it, and i wanted to think of something very deep to express my strong feelings toward this image. Somehow, i am running short of words but still love the fluidity, the poetic aura of the image so i guess i have to leave a comment....

 

Happy New Year 2009 with full of Creative Energy to YOU, CARLOS.

 

Warm regards, tanya

 

 

For me, this image epitomises your work Carlos. All of it, stripped down to everything but the bare bones and you have........(well those are my thoughts now) I am lost in my thoughts expressed on your canvas, thank you adn well done

Thanks a lot my friend, you get it, no doubts. This is a spark of my land, the inhospitable steppe where I was born and where I grew up, a wild territory without adorns, nothing is superfluous here, nothing is easy or sweet. Instilled in me, that's me. There are no more behind.

 

Pointed to this concept I could appreciate the expressions of Tanya about it, a vision/feeling from an extremely feminine point of view, and she nailed it as well.

 

Friends, I am not flattered, I am happy, because we share the essentials: beyond the technical facts and the academic purity remains the true sense of every things, mainly in photography:

 

A photo is an emotion.