graham_byrnes

I have to agree, but it's the way of the world. Even at the oscars, received wisdom is that "drama" (ie tragedy) is much more likely to win than comedy. Personally, I reckon there is enough real misery around the world (800 million malnourished, massacres, terrorism and war) that I don't need to wallow in someone having an emotional trauma on the big screen. Otoh, I know plenty of mathematicians who look a lot like this guy while trying to understand a problem. Maybe he's trying to read through Wiles's proof of Fermat's conjecture? Still a great photo :-)

So you've made it back home: I can see why your boss was keen to get you back :-) Just the right amount of blur on his left foot, great framing. With a 17mm... just how far from your head was that crampon?

Bravo, really excellent. If I was to be super picky, it's a shame the wrists are in focus more than the face... but then the slight de-focus adds to painterly look.

I've been through both of the passenger stations in Ghent, but never saw this... Very dramatic, looks slightly solarized? I can't get away from thinking of it as a holocaust deportation photo, I guess because of the B&W, the decrepit trains, brooding skies and that tower. Bravo.

For me, this is the best of the series: there is a feeling of the cross and the sructure it is built on looming over the viewer who is (sheltering?) under the tree. It might be better if the two components didn't seem to merge together, and if there was a bit more dramatic tone in the building... although how one goes about arranging such things I don't know :-)

This is very appealing... made me think of one of those big military topographic models. So in present times, sprouting a flower out of such a thing would be very nice. Plus the curves and colours are rather sensual in some way I don't want to think about too much :-)

I think the murkiness is just fine... it captures that late night, bleary-eyed closing time feeling.

Like a few other people I was a little distracted by the convergence of the buildings due to the perspective. As an experiment I got rid of it PS. Somehow the result looks strange, what do you think?

Now that I've seen the larger version... I like it as an abstract composition. it's a composition made almost entirely of black & grey rectangles. Recalls Braque and early Jackson Pollock for me in a vague way. People who are straining to see a literal "meaning" need to relax a bit. Didn't the art world get over asking what abstracts "meant" in about 1930? Yes, it's also a portrait of a city, in the same way that Brandt's contorted abstract nudes were portraits of women (or Pollock's "Broadway Boogie-Woogie" depicts NY) but I find it to more of an impressionist work inspired by any big city.

Well done: lots of snap from her eyes and a real expression. Her top appears a bit burnt out on this monitor (but it's a lap-top and is often misleading).

Reminds me of de Chirico. I don't care if it's a composite, but I guess it would be polite to say yes or no.

You've turned the light-post into a sculpture evoking a tree.

And of course it continues the X-theme, with the 4th side there as a reflection. Nice.

Doug, I think you need to chill a bit. One camp (which I belong to) sees something fresh and elegant here: the way the chair confuses itself with the paving to become an abstract. The other sees a chair, in a style photographed many times before, while the abstract stuff is just... confusion.

It's just another version of "you can't argue about taste", really ( gustibus non disputandem, for those who find arguments more powerful when stated in a dead language).

What I find more interesting is Kadok's question of the border between creativity and copying. Obviously photographing a painting is out. If you photograph a sculpture, you are at least responsible for the reduction of 3d to 2d, the lighting etc. So the photographer is choosing a view in a way analogous to a street photog. choosing a moment.... although maybe the choice is less.

Then we could add a little more by photographing the interaction of a person with the sculpture... or with a painting. The extreme would seem to be a completely synthetic scene... but that would lead us back to the "what are the bounds of photography" debate (synthesised in front of the camera, or after, in a computer?).

Anyone recall the name of the German artist who paints from photos, then exhibits a photo of the painting? :-)

I'm not so sure it's absurd... I remember working on my bicycle in the nude during very hot weather :-) I love the expression and the grain and the whimsy, but I'm not so sure about the halo effect on the wall.

I think this works, pace the comments by Doug. It's the curves that do the trick, those lovely arabesques that confuse themselves with the crazy paving. To such an extent that it's not immediately obvious what is shadow and what is crack. So in this case, multiple chairs would undermine the effect: the chairs would then disentangle themselves from the paving by virture of regular repetition.

I should say that I deserve no credit for the square crop: it was a square baking dish with rounded corners :-)

I think the framing is fine... any closer and you'd lose the feeling of the woman being dominated by the book & flower. Maybe the view out the window is a little distracting, but at least it gives a real context rather than looking like a studio shot. Ideally it might have been nice to have some light hitting the book to increase the feel of the woman shrinking away into the b/ground. Only other thought is that the sheet looks a little too carefully arranged around her head as though she is wearing a wimple rather than just wrapping herself in a sheet. If she *is* meant to be a nun, then the rest looks a little too much like a casually grabbed sheet.

 

Gee I'm fussy :-) Overall the balance of light is good, with just enough on the back wall... and the story is mysterious enough to keep us all wondering what it is...

 

Pleased to have found your photos.

It seems to be ok technically (so far as I can see from a small image), but... what are you trying to say with the pose, and particularly with the netting? To me the pose looks contrived and the netting looks arbitrary. Just my opinion...

I like it... composition appeals and it's nice punchy print.

I just looked at this for the first time on my home machine, which has a calibrated 19" CRT. Preiously I was using my work laptop, with a 13" LCD.... the blackness of the cormorants is less objectionable to me now... I must learn not to judge tone from an LCD. I must learn not to judge tone from an LCD. I must learn...

I don't think there is a clear distinction between porn and erotica and I'm no prude. However, this is a picture of an anonymous woman offering her genitals for mounting. It isn't subtle. The fact that it is soft-focus and BW, or that her labia are not explicit, are relatively minor modifications to something most people would call porn. Sorry, don't like it.

I have a fetish for roof-lines like this: used to photograph them a lot. This is a good one.

I like this... it doesn't look like a neg. In fact it reminds me of a 50's sci-fi movie somehow, plus it's very strong as a pure graphic.

What I really like about most of your photos is the impression that you are just capturing "un portrait nu". It's an expression I first read in an essay by Michel Tournier, who related the story of accidentally discovering it. He was visited by a journalist and asked her to pose for him. He intended a portrait: she leapt to a conclusion and took off her clothes. So he took her portrait while she was nude.

 

That's a long digression, but my point is that these are first, depictions of women with their personalities and strengths. That these women choose to present themselves more or less unclothed simply adds to the communication. This is in total opposition to the tradition of nude photography in which compliant models are arranged by the photographer so as to create sculptural forms.

 

This is one of the best, I think. Chapeau.

This reminds me of the excellent BW prints Ilford like to put on their data sheets... demonstration quality in other words. Congrats (for this and for surviving PoW :-)