philip_coggan

Thanks Misti. A pet boa! I'll have a look around... :)

Nice idea, but...the composition is a bit off (all the action takes place on the left and centre, the right is empty), and the white dress is blown out.

 

The guess the aim is to create a dream-like atmosphere - with all the clarity of some dreams, where the 'things' are prosaic but their juxtaposition is disturbing. Anyway, that seems to be the direction it's going - and the little girl+snake scenario has mythic resonance. (Even the pth disappearing into the forest is symbolic - but the best symbols are always ambiguous of course, or how else do oracles make a living?)

 

Maybe it's a little over-produced - the central snake could be dropped, and the girl at the back moved to the right to balance out the picture.

 

Good work, anyway.

Where did you get the snake? I've looked for a rubber one but can't find...and a real one seems out of the question.

Tell me if I'm right or wrong: I think what you're after here, and in many of your other photos, is the non-emotive, rational world that underlies the highly emotion-laden world we live in at sense-perception level.

 

The human-as-monkey can't see any-damn-thing without relating it to sex and/or food. We react to the colour erd because it means ripe fruit and/or dangerous beasties and plants (and maybe sex too - lips and labia). And so on. I think you're photos try to break that connection and show the world as if it had no meaning except the mathematical. So here we have circles and lines. And many of your other photos have the same focus.

 

And yet...well, this does in fact have emotive power. Did you intend that? Like a Jackson Pollack painting. Tho I've never been fond of Jack the Dripper myself. But there's always emotion out there...because after all, we remain monkeys.

You have successfully cut the connection between the image and real - finding, I suppose, the truly imaginary :)

So, Didelphis Virginiana is a possum (or opossum if you're American). Tho a certain plant nursery seems to be under the impression that it has, rather than eats, shoots and leaves. (I did a search on Google, and NatureHills.com was advertising). (And who said I don't know nuffink about punctuation?)

 

I haven't read all the comments, yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're being hauled over the coals again for your choice of subject.

 

But if Mr Hirst can get a reputation as a genius of our time for his work with cows, why not this possum? (And if Mr Hirst, why not your friendly local butcher?)

 

More seriously, your comments about why you took this do bring up the question of the inherent emotive power of things. Do we see a collection of shapes and colours (only), or do we see a dead possum? Each will be different, of course. Ah heck, I'm getting too analytical. I prefer to think of myself as your original intuitive. (Nevertheless, it's not just a collection of shapes of colours - I see a dead animal, albeit I have no particular emotional reaction, certainly not shock-horror).

Good work. The Rembrandt-ness comes (I believe) from the rich warm earth colours and from the use of chiaroscuro. Mike says he wanted to get more shadow-detail, but that's exactly what Rembrandt would not do. About the plastic bottle, which people seem to find offensive and modern and un-Rembrandt: Mr Van Rijn was a modernist himself, at least in matters of technique, and well up on the latest fashions out of Italy. I think he would have approved of the bottle.

Leslie - the date's wrong. All the photos from the shooting gallery were taken in 2003 - about 5 rolls, so there's lots more than this, but they get a bit repetitive.

 

Here I was going for the incongruity - the child with the too-large jacket and pants slopping over his feet and helmet almost hiding his eyes, playing with the weapon. Yes, you are exactly right - the subject is the fine line between play and earnest.

Simon - no, these are all from a single visit in 2003 - I forget the actual date, even the month, so I didn't try to update the info on this site. You might be right about the 'soft' onlookers - I wanted to use selective focus to emphasise theb boy with the weapon, but the viewer's eraction is always the criterion of success or failure.

 

Leslie - Phnom Penh's shooting gallery is not a civilised place! Half-tamed, perhaps. But to their credit, they do enforce the ear protection, and they do give basic safety training.

 

As for the causalness of the 3 in the background, well, this is what was going on at the time - they were just waiting their turn with the gun, like kids in Europe or the US might wait for a ride on a horse.

Ian - that would be the Road to Morocco I take it? - is Dorothy coming? (one feels one is showing one's age here...)

Haleh, what you say about good travel photography - capturing the essence of a place and culture - is quite true. Except that Nour hasn't done any such thing here. This isn't one place, it's two - the man on the right is in Morocco, the place behind him is in Egypt. The photo is totally misleading about the man's whereabouts. The man in the background is uninterested in the man in the foreground because the man in the foreground isn't there. And if you read any history into this from the background setting, it will be the wrong country's history (Egypt and Morocco are a long long way apart and have utterly diferent histories).

 

In fairness to Nour, he never made a secret of the way he created this image. But that's the whole point - it's just not a travel photo, and shouldn't be treated as one.

I'm returning to this because I haven't given up hope of pulling the discussion around to what the photo is (a portrait) instead of what it's not (a travel photo).

 

Every other week someone complains that the POW isn't representative of the chosen photog's work. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not, but this week it's true in buckets. This is definitely one of Nour's weakest photos, as a portrait or as anything else. On the plus side, the balance of light and dark areas in the frame is good, and draws attention very effectively to the main subject on the right (Uncle Fred with his ciggie) while still giving adequate prominance to the secondary subject (the man in the dark ally on the left). But that's about where the good part ends. While the two parts are well balanced in a formal aesthetic sense, they're not related at all psychologically - what's the meaning of the man in the dark alley vis-a-vis Uncle Fred? Answer: none. The two parts were put together in the one frame purely because they balanced in terms of areas of light and dark. This is no way to make a good portrait.

 

I think this is a great shame, because Nour is an extremely gifted photographer. His love seems to be portraits - they make up the bulk of his portfolio. But he seems to be always in danger of being subverted by his artist's eye, because he has a great feel for colours and dramatic lighting. Sometimes it works, as in the portrait of the boy with a sheep over his shoulders (when I first saw this I thought it was straight from the camera, but in fact it's been carefully and successfuly crafted from a relatively ordinary shot into something quite outstanding). But quite often the love of colour and form outweighs the actual content of the photo. That's fine if you're shooting abstractsn or landscapes, but in portraits (or travel shots where people are the point of interest) the aesthetics have to be subservient to the human content.

 

Anyway, if I'm lucky with the Pnet upload system (never having used it before) I'm going to put up the boy-with-sheep photo to show what Nour can do at his best. This one, incidentally, was shot as a single frame - surely the best way to go.

I think all those who of us who discuss this image in terms of rtavel photography (is it or isn't it, and what is travel photog) are making a big mistake. Nour never called this a travel photo. And for him, it's not: he's not visiting Morocco, he IS Moroccan. It's a non-travel photo. When he leaves Morocco and visits the US, that's when he'll start taking travel photos. But for the moment, he has this in a folder called Portraits. It's a portrait.

 

Then other photos in his portfolio show a real mastery of photoshop technique. He sues PS - very effectively - to add drama to his photos. He doesn't hide this (in fact he states himself that this is a montage). His aim is not straight reportage, it's to create a dramatic impact. I guess travel photography needs to stick fairly closely to the observed reality, but this kind of dramatic portraiture, does not. So please, let's get our critiques away this dead end of is it or is it not a good travel pic.

 

I'd urge everyone to go lok at Nour's portfolio - the portraits folder has some real gems.

This is very well done - your processing is masterly.

Alexander, you should do whatever makes you happy, of course, and to experiment is great...but personally, I prefer your black and white work. Keep clicking and the POW will come...:)

A lovelt photo Felix, soft and warm, makes me smile. I notice your initials in bottom right corner aer mirror-image - did you flip the picture?

You say you want to improve your photography - and I'm suer you'er sincere in that - but I honestly don't think this can be improved. Personally I might increase the conrtast just a little, but I have a personal weakness for strong contrast, so that's just my preferences speaking. The head is NOT placed too far to the left - moving it to a more cenrtal position (i.e. to the right) would make for a more static composition, which would definitely be worse than this (the man appears to be entering the frame, which adds life and informality to the portrait).

 

The only suggestion I can make is that your overall style appears to me rather formal. Your subjects need more informality if they are to live more fully. Of course, this is a matter of personal style, and I can't really tell you to change your style. So it's just a suggestion.

Oh do not ask what is it...

 

(Sure looks like a virus to me - or else a leftover noodle from a Chinese takeaway...

The dreaded word 'cliche' has been mentioned a few times ni the discussion, so I looked it up in my Franglais dictionary. It seems to mean a printing plate, also a negative from which a photo print is made, or the print itself. In other words, something reproduced or reproducable.

 

In other other words, there's a feeling in some quarters that this pic lacks originality.

 

Now, it's perfectly true that this is not the very first time I've seen a pic of a forest with a beam of sunlight illuminating mossy old tree-trunks against a backrgound of golden leaves. Nor is this an original take on the genre. Yet it is, I submit, well done. It captures the feel, and this would come across even better if it were erproduced in a gigantic coffee table format instead of on this tiny screen in dimensions a few centimeters across (even the Sistine Chapel would suffer by being reduced to postcard dimensions).

 

So it's a cliche, in terms of subject and approach, but a well-done cliche - and that's not easy.

 

Avoiding cliches is about the hardest thing of all. Long live well-done cliches!

Standardised PNet critique form (please tick appropriate box):

 

I think this photo could be improved by being

(a) cropped

(b) in colour (if black and white)

© black and white (if in colour)

(d) taken by me.

 

More seriously, and more philosophically, the crop versus compose in camera argument is fascinating. I always try to compose in camera - the thought that I can crop it later makes me (or would make me) lazy. On the other hand, composing in camera also tends to make my photos stiff and lifeless - because I spend too long getting them just right. So it's a trade-off to an extent.

 

This is a fine photo, combining high aesthetic quality (by which I mean simply that it makes us look at it, and makes us look where the photographer wants to dierct our eyes) with content (I don't see the point of beautiful photos of nothing much, tho I concede that tastes differ).

Ah me - this is a so-primal scene from Bangladesh...working, always working, men carrying earth, digging, filling. You have captured it well.

Taken with natural light, handheld camera, subject allowed to chose

the pose.

We have lift-off?

Leslie, is this part of a series? I remember seeing a series (here in PNet) about/of massage in Morocco - style exactly like this. It was a wonderful series. And when were you in Morocco, anyway?

Fish-shots: have you seen Barbieri's book "Equator" - some examples http://www.salvioli.com/barbieri/index.html