dan_sweet

Tris:

Please stop teasing us all--post some of your real work! All that stuff in your folders can't possibly be yours! It doesn't live up to any of your own hypercritical standards! Lets see the real stuff.

Or stop posting such pompous/pretentious advice so consistently.

Please!

First, Congrats on a cool pic! From the thumbnail I was expecting to see a very dull muddy picture. I was sure in for a shock--that lighting is surreal! I love these type of accidents or what i think of as almost circumstantial photos.

I'd also like to see a little more left/right seperaton of the boy and the girl. That obnoxious glare on the right would--I believe--strengthen the image with its departure. And Ed had an interesting comment about trying to bump up the contrast of the background--that would defiantely be worth experimenting with.

This is the frist time I have dared to comment on a POW for fear of the shark infested waters--but I would like to throw out the question--should we as photographers return and "work" this type of shot? The fortuitous pictures I have in this vein--though I fear none this good--seem better to me than the pictures I have intentiaonally "worked." However a little thought and work has definately improved an image or two of mine. Could we be getting significantly better images if we were to combine the elements of our surprise shots and a little hard work? Any thoughts? Apologies if this is not the correct place to raise this question. I do not mean to detract from the POW in any way. Just thought maybe I could start some dialogue early on to keep everybody from insulting each other right off the bat! Once again congrats on a shot I wish I'd taken!

Now, I know from the short time i have been around you are all capable of much better than this. I read all the digital, non-digital, photoshop comments the day before and definately enjoyed having viewed this photo and its comments BEFORE it became POW!

If people are kissing each others backsides in the comments section--they are probably doing it for a reason--they must be enjoying it! The photographer didn't ask for this much attention so leave the poor guy alone--he probably wishes he never got POW after all this. Upon my inital viewing i said to myself "nice graphic" and moved on. From reading the above it seems like many of you should do the same. And after tonight hearing all about Rober Mondavi and just how classy everyone is I was dissapointed. Also sad to note that every one has way too much time to waste with their calculator--unless you took Phils advice and wrote a "simple relational database" /spreadsheet combo to do those ratings calculations for you--who cares about the ratings--will they make you better?--NO! Only YOU can do that! Get out and take some more pictures--look at some more old paintings or maybe even some new ones--read some books--travel--try looking at the world through a different lens (NOT a camera lens! ) Those are the things that improve my photography.

And yes i freely admit I use photo.net far more than i contribute to it. Thanks to all--Ellis Veneer, Scott Eaton, Art Haykin, and Dan Smith specifically for their comments and everyone else for the wealth of info in the archives!

And yes put me in the protest club of not uploading any images!--I tried to help out by uploading some sample scans for some folks in the medium format digest but gave up after the page locked again on my third attempt! Sorry!