philip_coggan

If thisd photo has nothing of interest in it, why is Mr Hamilton leaving a comment? (And why am I?)

Please God let's not get into the what-is-manipulation argument. I'm far more interested in how it was done, than in whether he should have checked the box.

 

Like I said, this is a fine image, and it manages to pull off its special effects without making them obtrusive (and the photo implausible).

 

The danger with doing this kind of thing is that prettiness lies in wait if you set a single foot wrong. Here's another photo from the same portfolio that I think does fall off the edge - looks as pretty as a painting, which ain't good. (It's titled Mountain Boy).

Let me say first that I find this an excellent photo - it had immediate impact when I opened it, and that's what counts. A large part of the appeal is that goes a little beyond the simple documentary 'this is what I saw' mentality - reminiscent of the dream-sequence in Casper Hauser, which incidentally was shot at Bagan, a rather similar place for exotic architecture. (I'd like Kenvin to visit Bagan and see what he makes of it! - it's not so far from where he lives).

 

The other thing is the processing. Processing of photos is inevitable and essential - dodging and burning, cropping, whatever. It's simply bringing out the best of what's in there. The tricky part is to keep a light hand, make it unobtrusive, so that the image remains plausible. This is indeed plausible - but something has surely been done, too. Look at this image from the same portfolio, which must have been taken within seconsd of the featured photo - quite different lighting. This is not a Bad Thing - I'm just intrigued, wondering what was done.

What's wrong with red slacks? I wear them all the time... (and my paisley shirts).

Liza Minelli!

A Blakean Rose forsooth! A rose of ash and iron!

 

Had to share a new word with you: Verocity. It describes that stage reached by participants in an on-line debate when tempers begin to flare and the assuredness that one is totally correct in one's opinion reaches fever-pitch. See http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=115960

 

 

Curious 1950s cartoon or poster effect you've created here. I achieved something similar once by selecting various colours one at a time and pushing the saturation slider till they alost but not quite fell off the edge - maybe you've done the same. This has interesting possibilities - wonder if it'll print like this, or is it out of gamut?

Thanks Douglas. Few people drop by my portfolio, and so I'm pathetrically grateful when anyone does :).

 

This was taken on a Saturday morning at Yangon central station. This is a commuter train, running in a big look from the city centre out into the farthest semi-rural suburbs and back. Presumably this man is a commuter. He looks very like the communters you see on any underground in Europe or North America - tired, disspirited, abstracted. A testament to our common urban experience.

 

Maybe a little more on the right would be a good idea - but a bit late now :).

 

Cheers

 

Philip.

This one attracts my attention because the subject matter is unusual - technologyscapes. The treatment (solarisation?) is effective enough, but I think there's intersting possibilities in doing this kind of subject in b+w with something of the treartment seen in this week's POW (the odd nude with a texture overlay and harsh lighting - both can be controlled and added in photoshop, tho I think the POW photo is without photoshop).

 

Half the battle is finding what you want to point the camera at.

Looks like they got Matisse in to do the drawing :). Is it really ancient Greek?

John - I agree that quality is not simply subjective. But you seem to me to be arguing from the basis that one particular 'look' represents quality. As I read you, you're implying that 'quality' means an image that's clear and clean, sharply focussed, shows as many shades of tone as is technically possible, etc etc - the classic glamour look in fact. And you're saying that this image departs from that ideal because of the photogrpaher's lack of technical skill.

 

If that's really what you're saying, then a great deal of contemporary advertising photogrpahy shows the same lack of skill - this isn't so far from an awful lot of things I see on posters in the windows of the boutiques in my local shopping mall, or in magazines.

 

At a more detailed level, I think the texture must surely be deliberate - that amount of dust and scratches would surely be very hard to come by accidentally. Similarly the lighting - it seems to me that the photogrpaher has deliberately used harsh light as a way of blurring the boundaries between the torso and the backdrop, and to draw more attention to the hand and the line of the torso.

 

As I said in my first comment (up above this one, if the elves don't zap it), ai believe that the actual pose here is pretty ordinary - model on her side, facing the camera, with a hand lapped over the low point of the torso. If it were photogrpahed in the clean clear style you see in all those bloody landscapes you see in B&W magazine, it would look as boring as all those bloody landscapes. The trouble with nudes is that they're second only to sunsets as cliches. Very hard to do in an original, arresting manner. The harsh lighting and the texture of this one at least add a slightly novel twist.

 

(Of course, if I've misrepresented your argument and thinking, all that I've said is beside the point :).

Natasha - I think it's a torso, with the hips in the West. The model seems to be reclining on her side, with the hand over the low point between hips and rib cage.

 

As a pose, that's pretty standard, and probably wouldn't make for an interesting photo. What grabs the attention is the texture - whether this was the result of intention or of lack of skill (as John Kelly suggest) only the photographer can tell us.

Hi Felix. I felt I had to reply to your comemnt on this particluar shot because you make a very honest point which obviously comes from some consideration.

 

We judge others by their achievements, ourselves by our intentions. In other words, I may have been guilty here of seeing an intention instead of an achievement. You obviously feel so, and the customer is, as always, right.

 

Anyway, my intention through the series was to present a portrait of the city of Yangon through its people. This is downtown Yangon only of course, the few blocks making up the old British commercial centre. I hoped that, by taking these posed portraits, I'd capture something of the variety and the mood the city through its inhabitants. For this boy in particular, I was looking to capture his exhaustion (he spends all day running, not walking, through the streets selling these brooms). But you say he simply looks blank. I'll reconsider. (There's another photo of the same boy taken full-length which I rejected in favour of this closer view, but I'll reconsider - and maybe simply drop it).

 

I can't claim to be original in what I'm doing here, as this approach to portraits - grab somone off the street and ask them to allow you to take their photo - has been around for a long time. It's tricky to do, because you don't have time to come to a real relationship with the person. Salgado would hate it.

 

Ciao :).

 

P

Thanks Felix for commenting on so many of my photos, and so honestly. Yes, she's posing - self-aware and aware of the camera. Trying on the wedding gown - wedding was not quite yet. Our ways of seeingn ehre are indeed different, and I'll send you an email about Yangon and the general philosophical questions you raise.

 

Ciao

 

P.

The gin is the man; the tonic is the beige b/g; the lemon is the unexpected angle. This is a better shot (aesthetically) than the boy and the lungyi, because it demands an effort to decode. There's a shock, a moment in which the viewer says "What the heck is THAT!?" The lemon is the surprise, the shock, the hook that makes the eye linger and turns the mind on.

One of the best from your Yangon portraits series - full of energy and movement. Not sure about cropping the chap at the bottom - I think I'd prefer to see moer of him rather than less, though that would create a different kind of portrait I guess.

God!

The 'regard' of the lady and her baby are excellent.

Agree with Tom Sperduto :).

Just wanted to leave a tribute to your amazing abilities. Congratulations.

Wow, but you do get the comments!

 

I haven't read all of them - too many - but a few here and there stood out. In particular someone mentioned that this was bordering on pornography. I read his comment and, oddly enough, I don't think he was using the word 'pornography' in a derogatory sense ("This is wicked evil pornography and you should start packing for the afterlife!"). I read it as saying it's in the style of porn - very very soft porn I guess. This because of the way the girtl is posed, arms upraised to expose the breats to viwe, eyes on the viewer, and the passive 'feel' of the image overall. It's a corny cliched pose, and porn is always corny and cliched. (God, I sound like the Pope of aesthetics, delivering judgements on porn!)

 

Nothing wrong with good porn.

 

But what you were after, I think, was glamour, which this is not. Well, not successfully, anyway. The light is too washed-out and unflattering (oddly enough, porn frequently doesn't bother to flatter)the flash-shadows too harsh.

 

Anyway, getting at last to my eral point: I thnik yuo've stumbled across a very interesting mixture of 2 genres here, porn and glam. Have a look at the work of Bill Henson (Australian art photog, repersented by Oxley Galleries, and the gallery website is about the only place on the web you can see his work). He uses light like this, tho more sophisticated (ought to be, considering the equipment art his disposal), and in similar settings (he favours the urban fringe, a landscape of spiritual desolation populated by wraithes of the lost). He wouldn't pose a model like this, but you'll find your own way of course.

 

Incidentally, she'd look better centred.

I won't talk abt what you did right or wrong, but about how I feel it could have been better done (whoich isn't to say I think it's badly done - in fact I think it's good - but like life itself, it could be better).

 

First, the finger-over-mouth question. Finger-over-mouth can be good - makes the subject look thoughtful or whatever, depending on what the finger is doing and the dierction of the gqaze and so much else. But this finger looks casual - as if you hadn't thought much about when to press the shutter and had consequently caught him before he was ready. I'd have taken more frames with the finger, but chosen a more expressive one - this one uis just indeterminate.

 

Then the gaze. Like the finger, it's indeterminate, looks casual, meaningless. I think the way to overcome this is to make him feel that he's not having his picture taken, he's having his portrait made (pictures that are made, not taken). This doesn't mean creating a stiff. posed picture, but engaging him in something that will bring out a specific moment - get him talking about something that interests him, get him doing something that involves him, in short, anything that brings about a specific, as opposed to a generic, pose and expression.

 

Finally the broader balance of masses - there's an aweful lot hapenning on the left side, and bugger all on the right. "Something happening' means that you have him there, his head there, and that painting there. Maybe this is good - it does create an unbalanced look, and unbalance can be good. But I think there must have been other options.

There's a great sense of stillness and silence in so many or your portraits, of a moment frozen forever. There must have been a before and after, but they seem to have fallen away utterly. This is an eternal now.

It is magical, and also rather mythic. Swans and other large fowl have rather a reputation in that regard.

Amidst all these portraitsof people, a portrait of a non-person! Very good shot. Though as others have noted, the blurring of the edges of the hat and bag looks odd.