himalaya

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Daniele, congratulations on having this photograph selected as Photo of the Week! I think you must be setting a record for achieving this so soon after having become a member, and this might be the first POW that was actually submitted in the previous week.

 

I agree with the elf on the composition, with the pavement bricks almost forming waves that lead the eye to the girl and the drain grate, which are clearly at the focal point of the image, with the cross as a secondary focal point. The lines of the building and the bicycles strengthen the composition further. The tonality is also quite pleasing with the high contrast contributing to the surrealism of the image.

 

However, on the down side, I feel that this photograph delivers less meaning and emotional impact than it promises on first glance. What is the idea behind this photograph? What is the significance of the girl standing next to the grate? I am left wondering what it is all about.

 

[Added later: Michael Walter's interpretation (appearing below) of the drain as the gate of hell, with the girl torn between it and the cross, is quite intriguing, and I must admit didn't occur to me. I would be very interested in hearing from the photographer on the intended interpretation. Or is the photograph just a set of mysterious elements upon which the viewer is expected to impose a meaning? ]

Nestor, you have a good memory. I posted a cropped version of this photo about 3 months ago. This is full-frame, and not as saturated.

Anton, well I made my debut on photo.net with this rather distinctive style, and greatly to my surprise, it has been enthusiastically received. I am afraid if I now posted my traditional shots, it would blow my cool image. Cheers, Sophia.

Anton, I don't expect everyone to like my photographs. To be honest, I have been very pleasantly surprised that so many people here regarded these images highly, as I previously thought that photo.net was more of a camera club in its tastes.

 

While I don't expect everyone to have the same taste, I do hope that people will respect different tastes. Do I correctly detect a slight lack of such respect in your comment?

 

You did rate the pictures fairly, unlike another person today, who not only didn't like the pictures, but used very low ratings in attempt to nullify the high ratings of others, which it seems to me should be prohibited in some way.

 

I like the complexity of this one, and once again the superb colors. However, I think the speckling in the bottom of the frame significantly detracts. On the whole, this is a good, but the weakest of a very strong folder.

The color combination (yellow and purple) is very appealing in this one.

Andrew, all of the photos in this folder have digitially manipulated colors, but they are not composites. In this case, there was also some perspective correction to make the windows somewhat rectilinear. (I was shooting up and the building was also curved.)

 

Not scans, these are digital images from a Canon D30.

 

This one is sharpened more than I would for a "realistic" image; but probably part of what you are seeing, Dominique (and I gather disliking) is the effect of a diffusion filter. This also adds some graininess. I decided later that I personally prefer the photograph without this effect -- just the color manipulations. The diffusion effect also didn't look as good in the 16x20 version. But so many people have rated and commented on this now, I had better leave it as it is.

 

 

For those who expressed an interest, this is a more "straight" version of the image.

Nestor, thank you. The bottom windows and the wall beneath are not saturated; they are just bathed in late afternoon light. The top windows were saturated a little to make them more yellow, but not as much as in some of my other photographs.

I can't agree that it is uncomposed. It is almost a classical triangualar composition, with the sight lines forming another triangle that complements and reinforces the main one.

Thank-you for the encouraging comments. When I first thought of doing this technique, I was afraid that it either wouldn't work or that it would be trivial. I thought, what stops anyone from just grabbing the saturation slider in Photoshop and moving it over? When I discovered that it is actually rather hard to find images where this works, I felt a little more comfortable displaying the successful ones. Also, it turns out to be important to saturate different parts of the photos by varying amounts. For example, in this photograph the green of the grass and some other smaller areas were saturated less than the rest.

 

 

In some of the pictures, I am also shifting the hues slightly, also sometimes selectively, so as to make them a little more abstract and to balance the colors better. This is why "Water Park Kids" glows the way it does, for example.

 

I started taking pictures with these effects previsualized, and this is one of them. Perhaps that is why this one is one of the most successful, although I also think "Townline Tenpin", "Water Park Kids", "After a Hot Tub", and "Nantasket Beach" are pretty good.

 

I've also experimented with the idea of displaying a monochromatic (desaturated) and super-saturated version of an image side by side. It turns out to be very hard to find images where both versions work, and I am looking forward to my first success.

This is very striking, but I think it would be stronger if you cropped it about 20% off the right.

Even though your mountainscapes are beautiful, this picture shows that you don't need spectacular mountains to make a spectacular photograph. Some grassy hills and the odd wildflower will suffice, not mentioning your great eye.

I was delighted to have your comments on the photograph in my folder, because I noticed this yesterday in the gallery and it was my pick for Photo of the Day. Beautiful.

Beautiful colors and composition.

Your "Patchwork" photographs are lovely. It is hard to pick, but I think I like this one the best, probably because of the interesting line.

I agree it can't be cropped without removing too much of the waterfall, which is what makes the image dynamic and exciting. But the composition would be more conventional and probably more pleasing if the boat were a little less central.