philmorris

And here's a detail

Here's the 6 by 7 version I was thinking about.

Sorry I've ben an age getting back to you. Thanks for the comments here (including my lad's - he's a photography student and can develop and print unlike his poor father). This is a crop from a much larger neg and as the title suggests, the man was hidden in the shadows of the aisle surrounding the Doges' Palace. I agree with Julien's well made point that it would have more meaning (certainly given whqat I was alluding to by the title I gave it) if I included a lit portion of foreground in order to demonstrate how he had tucked himself out of the sunshine. This can be done but not in a square format. I think however that it would be justifiable to re-crop to a 6*7 format. The man himself is already dodged but typically I didn't go as far as I might, though on the other hand, viewing the man close up after the dodging I did there is ample detail in the stitching of his coat and ribbing in his hat. It just doesn't come out in a scrint this small. You may notice he's got a ciggie in his left hand and how white it is. It's a good inidication how dark he and his clothes were. He really did look like he had just emerged from a coal mine.

Thanks Adrian. I agree the woman occupies too much space given the soft focus. May be I'd think differently if she were sharper. Either way it's just a loose shot from somewhere near where I poked my elbow into a doughnut.

This is very nice Dad- i was there when you took this. I like it muchly. Peace out, Your loving son Dan.

Thanks so far. Andy, the Olympus goes everywhere I go. Indeed, I was particularly grateful that I had it with me on this occasion. Not so much because it allowed me to take this pickie (more on which below) but because the dumb bag handlers had decided against chucking the case containing my tripod and other cameras on the plane. I eventually got the main gear a whole week later!

 

Jennifer, the comment's a good one; the pic a good deal less so. Though I don't think a mission is the answer. When I was younger photographic missions and projects were all the rage. So I got myself one. I missed heaps of opportunities because they fell outside the mission. That was an important lesson. Additionally, I don't find it essential that a photograph should have something especially profound about it. Photographing only the profound would mean there'd be a hell of a long time between starting a roll and finishing it. Besides, I like the plain and simple, the everyday easy goin' (actually I like just about anything done tastefully and by use of some smart thinking), and my days are filled with the plain and simple so that's what I tend to gravitate towards. I like to see credible twists in the everyday and that's when I go click.

 

So let's turn to this pic. First the idea. The idea isn't mine and by no means original. It's been done countless times before. That's why I thought of it quickly. The idea is that the viewer should be perplexed by the protruding hand and curious enough to want to know who it belongs to and what activity might be going on behind the curtain. That's it. Wanna know? Second the flaws. There are many. The exposure is too slow, perhaps 1/8 sec, may be less. The hand is blurred and poorly defined. The curtain divides the picture symmetrically, geometrically and in terms of tones and thus dominates to the detriment of the subject hand. Further more, by doing so it admits the vodka bottle as a potential subject where it ought to be subservient or better still absent. The shot's displayed full frame. I included the stuff to the left to include something which might be recognisable as a plane interior. A cropper might very likely discard that side. Third the technique. There's none to speak of. You see the chance and seize it. You frame once and go. Try framing twice and it's already over. That was the case here. It's very easy to burn film in return for nothing in particular.

 

So I appreciate your thought on content and in the round tend to agree with you. The picture holds no magic for me. But then I know what's happening behind the curtain.

Thanks Andy.

thx Andy. signing off until August 17th.

Hi Leigh,

 

I blame the inability of the net to resolve fine detail. Below is the full frame with a square I've overlayed. The overlayed square appears beneath it, blown up to 100% magnification (scanned at 1600 ppi with an Epson 2450). It loses some again since I've made the file size of the inline pic only 60Kb (which rates as 03 quality in PS's "Save For Web" function).

Oh Hi Colin. You just nipped in there. Point taken about beer in a standard glass, but you've got to remember that this particular Kings Arms is west of the Greenwich Meridian :)

But the windows across the road are level with the edge of the frame. It's the windows and door in The King's Arms that are wonky. Luckily it has a level floor.

Oh and Dave, there's also what slope? you might take a look at.

Dave, you and I must have common ancestors. I really have to force myself to not notice things like wonks and slopes. For I too am the man who is called upon to declare the picture straight. I too wince that the medieval stonemason was a thou out and is responsible for buggering with the symmetry of some 13th century piece of architecture. One day it's a blessing but another a fearsome curse.

 

I came to street work after landscape. I'm still working on tolerance towards the compositional gaff. One moment I think I'm hanging on to a state of appreciation of the awol composition, blur, tilt, misplacement and all those other things that would ordinarily make you feel physically ill. Other days I feel I'm losing it. When I'm level headed, so long as I feel the "gaff" is not unlovable or incomprehensible, or that there is a deserving place for the booboo, I'll toy with it and try hard to ignore the gaff; rather I'll seek to view the shot as a random single moment in time and learn to love the oddity.

 

Here is a supposed "street" shot. Fact is, I don't think it's "raw" enough to enable the slope to be excused. May be I'm wrong there because of (and that brings me to my next curse in street work) the desire to click at that moment when I decide everything is balanced / to reject when it's not. I miss countless opportunities because of this. I see them developing but my preconceived idea of where the pinacle of development will be achieved inevitably involves waiting .. and then disappointment as the chance dissolves. So with this I might have levelled it off along the horizontal ... but at the risk of missing it all together. She collects her change and she's off.

 

As for compostion generally, I think I got the midline vertical OK and where I wanted it - slap down the middle. Regarding adequate space below the heel, I'd say it's OK in my judgment. you're saying ideally there should be some more room below the heel to give the shot breathing space. I interpret that to mean I'm too close. Rather than should have tilted the camera down a little more; not tilted down because "my ideal" in this leg shot is the contrast between white pants and black heels and I deliberately placed the flesh between the two midway in the frame. In other words, the flesh position dictates the relative position of the pants to heels to frame edge. Or, if one drew two diagonals from one corner to the other so they bisected in the middle of the picture, they would meet around the middle of the flesh area with the mid-vertical going between the legs right up to the crutch-piece.

 

 

Do come back on this because I can well understand your dilemma in the street. Your stuff oozes painstaking preparation, which is a million miles from pulling the trigger at a split second's notice. It's why I like doing street, to include the wrestle with the compositional expectations of two genres which are poles apart.

Thanks gents. Yes Andy she most certainly possessed a striking physique. I remember averting my eyes the moment I noticed the pronounced Adam's apple and the spread of hair running waydown to her bollocks. (daft joke).

 

Bal, I still haven't got around to developing my film. (Now I really hate that!) It's something I keep putting off. So I can't say it's down to my developing. I hand my film in for developing at Jessops now. The lab I used to go to has just stopped B&W! Jessops don't develop in house they send it out to a variety of places. I'm glad you like my scrinting. I don't do much alteration to the scan I make. I spend most of my time looking.

That's right and I agree Bal. I dodged as much as I dared before his face turned muddy. One thing I just noticed; how the window frame and the door slopes, yet the top of his pop is dead level.

Here's four naff ones from the same roll.

Don't you raise your voice to me mate! Remember, I was down in London for just a few hours and half of them were spent in boozers. Andy was there for a friggin' fortnight for crissake! :)

I follow Doug's interesting proposition that the picture lacks something; is in need of some addition. At first I figured there was a fair amount of truth in that (but not centre of interest - I know those words were not originally yours Doug) in that the picture is not immediately and obviously underwater in the traditional sense of what might be seen in the commonest underwater photographs; though for sure it hinted that way. No fish, no waving reeds, no slowly descending severed head. But look closer and the signs of undersea life reveal themselves. I think I can count five small yellow fish (of the variety I carry around in my camera bag) and perhaps a couple or so dark ones. But let's imagine, because these camera bag fish are just a couple of inches long and evidently we need a shoal of'em. Where are all these fish going to go? I have my doubts they could comfortably fit anywhere in the composition and I wonder how they might be appropriately lit. But suppose we found someplace to stick them and we could all see them beautifully illuminated. Hasn't that addition just become a competing interest? Would that really be advisable? I don't think so.

 

And doesn't the seriously wide angle with close detail degrading to distant darkness suggest the diver approached the making of this photograph in an educated way? I don't see much to suggest it was taken casually.

An awful, awful disability. Forty some odd years on, I dare say you wonder how they fared into adulthood. For my part I stare into the centrally placed litle fella's eyes God bless him, with his sweet, narrow shoulders and fingers exploring the shape of a triangle, and try to imagine the ghastliness of the confinement he endures, made oh so excrutiatingly powerful to me by contrasting the fleeting interest of the instrument's ring with day upon day of enduring afliction. The picture is dynamite and has had me in thought way past my bed time.

no real message. howbout you just tell me the first thing that comes

in to your head.

Ah shucks Andy, you're so extra kind, words fail me. You know as well as I do that for every four scenes you captured, I missed three and a half of them.

 

And I think that when you do get home (which knowing you will probably be the early hours of tomorrow morning) another unavoidable truth will be that you owe your Dad's monitor an apology.

 

So here's to the next time. How d'ya fancy some wild camping?

One of the things I do do is look everywhere. I like looking at all the photograph. Even places where I'm not supposed to. And on this occasion it took Pete to drawn my attention to the criss cross as a focus point. Previously I'd ridden over it. Imagining I'm coming fresh to the picture I still think the dominant aspect is the lower left to upper right sweep of the tree. With a resting point (if any) somewhere in the crotch of the Y. But those branches lead everywhere and I don't mind that they do. I mean to say that is what the picture is about. When I say poopoo the booboo I mean to make light of it. Besides it's an unimportant photograph that I didn't have to work hard for.

Well I never noticed it either! Now I'm noticing cross Xs all over the place. My latest PITA is the pair reflected in the murky water. But I do remember as I was focusing this shot that I spotted this blurry line and increased DOF to bring the nearby branch (that exits the left edge) into focus. The plan was to make the blur less distracting by merging it into focus with all the other branches. A booboo perhaps. I'm undecided. I'm thinking may be I should poopoo the booboo.

I think that this picture owes a great deal to the horizontal alternating dark and light shades of grass and straw which balance with the rows of upright poles.

I follow. I saw the 3:1 pano (one 'n' not two) and the reference to 70mm and put two and two together (well 35 and 35, same difference)