pennington

To everyone that likes this photo Thank You.
To everyone that does not like or has doubts about this photo and has expressed why, Thank you also.
Five and a half years ago when this was posted I could not decide if I liked it or not. Since then I have realized that this is one of those photo's that grabs my attention but fails to hold my interest for more than a brief moment. As someone said it is what it is, nothing more and nothing less.
I did re-shoot this, a couple of times. Never came up with anything that could even grab my attention. This light was just no longer there. Then I changed jobs and now the building is long gone.
To maybe clear up a few questions from above the slight softness and somewhat low contrast were intentional, the cropping was not an accident and the gnome at the top right was left alone because that is just what was there.
If anyone has any specific questions feel free to ask, i will try to check back and answer them if I can. And please continue to say anything you like or don't like about this, I have learned more about this photo in the last day than I have in five years.

Ouch. Who hit the sign?

Very nice, love the color.

Looking at the large view I really don't think it could stand to be any sharper.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I really never expected a very big response for this picture as I had a lot of doubts about it. Nothing I could really pinpoint, just as I look at it something doesn't sit quite right with me and I'm not sure what it is. If something strikes you as wrong please let me know.

Now I'll try to answer a few questions.

Micah... It does look a little grainy, this was a test shot with a Canon G3 and a very long exposure so it got a little noisy.

Salvatore... I do know the place well as it is where I work. I wish I could say I calculated the position of the sun so it would be like this but the truth is I finally noticed it after passing about one hundred times..... so I guess I would mostly call it dumb luck that I finally saw it.

Arnab... Just natural light.

Sherwood... It is kind of Gigerirsh now that you mention it, I never noticed it. I have always like Giger's dark muted sometimes depressing colors.

Jayme... You are right it's not drain piping. It's actually steam piping, some sort of homemade radiator I think. It is in a little used part of a WWII era manufacturing building and there is a lot more of it. There is another wall with a section that has 90's and 45's and about five times as many pipes and is in multiple layers, but that part is in almost total darkness so I'm not sure what to do with it yet.

As I said above this was a test shot, I'm going back with some sheet film and a real camera to see what I can do. And if there is anything you don't like here please let me know.

Any and all comments welcome. Thanks.

The composition is OK, I thought the ligthing was not that good till I made a few adjustments, the subject is............umm.......yeah it's one of these..........that kinda looks like one of those.

But for someone who's never seen one of those, what would one of these look like?

How lucky you are to find fog with these qualitites, all the fog around my house gets denser the farther away it is. This almost looks like a nice even layer right on the camera lens. Really special thanks for posting.

Both images are wonderful. I think the figure belongs dead center in both of them. The 50mm version does draw the viewer in but this version gives such a feeling of solitude to the lonely hiker that I prefer the wider view. And no it's not too wide.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I said "is more difficult" when I should have said, can be more difficult, poor choice of words on my part.

 

You wrote "Being original - and doing it well! - is extremely difficult" I completely agree.

 

You wrote "and even more so when difficult techniques are involved". Degree of diffuculty has no bearing on wether or not I like a picture. In most case (not all) I don't care what the photographer had to do to get the picture. The picture is all that counts.

 

You wrote "Taking a simple yet outstanding portrait or picture of a tree is indeed very difficult. But in the case of a staircase, what is the difficulty, honestly? " What is the difference?

 

You wrote "Composing properly is of course necessary, but I believe 9 bearely decent photographers out of ten would have composed this particular POW picture the way we see it" Maybe, for barely decent photographers they are probably all going to come away with nearly the same shot, maybe not this shot above but all looking much alike. Don't you agree that 10 really good photographers would come away with 10 very different pictures?

 

You wrote "Saying this, I am not at all trying to denigrate that Kenneth is a very good photographer - he is -, but I am just saying that I see no reason to be in awe for a photo like this. " I completely agree. I am certainly not in awe of this picture either, but I really do like it, I like almost everything about it no matter how simple or how difficult it was to take. I've seen what I think are better staircase shots. One of my favorites that you seem to be fond of as well Marc is right here http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1033880 in Kenneth's own folder.

As mentioned earlier the subject is a little tired (hell i've almost worn it out myself), but this one is very special. Sometimes when a subject becomes very much a cliche getting a truly good shot like this one is more difficult than being original. We have all seen some really original really terrible stuff haven't we? I tend to agree with Michael & Patrick above that I prefer it to be flipped & start at the bottom left I can't explain why, just feels more natural to me. The illumination being so even from bottom to top is also out of the ordinary and greatly contributes, along with the colors, to a really nice overall feel.

I think we would all agree we'd like to see him a little higher in the frame. I don't think looking straight at the camera would help. Actually I think that might ruin it to some degree. The way his feet and head are in opposite directions creates a nice tension, Like he is about to disappear out the right of the frame any moment now. Like they always do .01 seconds before I snap the shutter.

This is probably my favorite in your Cincinnati folder.I think the exposure is perfect, but yeah that one building and what we can see of his little brother are a little hot. You said you had to expose for the whole scene so I am guessing your camera was in stitch mode and the first shot sets the exposure, is that right? If it is then one trick you can try is after you are done taking all the shots for your stitch, take your camera out of the stitch mode and pan back around and take another shot of the hot building with a correct exposure (make sure the focus does not change). Then in PS you can extract the correctly exposed building and replace this one. Some people would argue against doing that but what the hell, it's digital and stitched already so the purists would complain from the start. Have you gone down lately, the river is really getting high. I don't know if that would help or hurt these shots.

A.J. I like this one much better than your previous post. I think the exposure is better on this one, and I like the added foreground. In this one I get more of a sense of where you were when you took this. The other has just a few limbs at the bottom and I feel you need more like in this one, or none at all. And hey, at least now I know which one of those hills is Mt. Adams.

I think it works quite well.

Definitely not a snapshot. I would have liked to have seen the second child standing also, but we can't have everything can we.

One of my favorite places. Thanks for sharing.

A slightly elliptical pinhole will be softer. But I would hate to see this any sharper at the same time. And I definitely don't think it's too dark.

I like all Three you posted so far. Could turn into quite a nice series.

Best I've seen all day.

Outstanding tonal range. I never would have seen this in B&W.

Somehow I've been hanging around here for a while now without seeing your folder (guess I've had my head in the sand or somewhere). This image is a great addition, I would hate to see the sprig at the upper left go. Actually I wouldn't mind if it were a little bigger.

I have seen this in person many times but have never tried to photograph it. Nice work.

I love the composition and I think the exposure is perfect. If you stop down any you will lose the wonderful delicate feel of this picture.

I would still call it unmanipulated. I would also call it incredibly beautiful.

I used to have a YashicaMat, cant say I ever got resuts like this with it. Very nice.