graham_byrnes

I can understand where Daniel is coming from. Obviously for the National Press Council, "truth" has some currency. Since Daniel is a press photographer, his primary responsibility is to "report" what he sees and his credibility is on the line... just as we expect journalists not to simply "make up" stories.

 

However, not all photography is photojournalism. Some strives simply to be Art (whatever the hell that is). Just as the standards of journalism are not imposed on novelists, the standards of PJ need not, should not, fall on all photogrphers.

 

Normally this is not a problem: if I see a photo in a newspaper/newsmagazine I assume the standards of PJ have been applied. If I see a photo in a gallery (without a sign saying "photos of X in Y doing Z"), then I admire them as images created *somehow* by the photographer. How exactly is up to him/her... and I don't see that distinctions need be made between posed models, gels, clever lighting and digital. Or paint...

 

Which is not to say news photographers can't exhibit in galleries or that journalists can't write novels, so long as everybody is honest about what they are doing. And if someone gets caught making it up when they say they didn't, well they deserve to go down in flames.

 

The problem on PhotoNet is that the context disappears. It's not a photojournlism site, nor an "art photography" site. Which opens the door to a lot of confusion, torn hair, angry words and tears before AEST bed-time.

 

To me, the answer seems simple. We all agree to say when we have fiddled so as to substantially change an image from what really existed. In some cases it won't be necessary (Marc Gougenheim's Jurassic Neighbourhood really didn't need a warning...), but it's a small effort to maintain site-wide peace, love & harmony (yeah, well we can dream :-)

I also suspected photoshopping, because a) the birds were so much darker than the rest of the scene; b) the depth cues seem quite mixed up, since the darkness would have them much closer to the camera than the trees, but that isn't suggested by the DoF. That could be due to the fog confusing everything;

c) there are weird bow-waves around the birds, presumably from the heavy j-pegging.

 

So I was concerned not so much that PS had been used, but that it had been used badly. Since I don't doubt Yuri's word, I guess it's a case of truth being stranger to look at than fiction (like DB's horse under a rainbow shot :-)

 

As for the image itself: I do find the darkness of the birds sits a bit heavily in a composition of delicate greys. For me, the photo "Morning" in the same folder is a more successful version of a similar theme. But that might be because I'm almost never up at such an hour to see what cormorants flying in fog look like... :-)

 

Cheers & congrats, Graham

I shot 2 rolls of Delta 400 in the Netherlands, and this is the only frame I found acceptable: even it has large grain and limited shadow detail to what I expect from this film. From memory, the film was x-rayed 11 times in my hand-luggage (MEL,LAX x2,JFK,LHR,Amsterdam x 3, LHR,SNG,MEL:

they x-rayed all my gear as I left customs, AFTER the flight!). The Vista 400 colour film I shot seemed ok...

Nice. No way to pan for blur when the bike is coming right at you. The only picky things that might have made it better would be to have the tyre contact patch in-frame, and for the rider to wear a lighter visor so that his eyes are visible :-) Is this Nicky Haydn? I know names from US superbikes, but don't see them to know the numbers (except Mladin & Gobert...)

Nice... good use of the sun, strong graphic elements and the runner is at about the right scale to just offset the location rather than become the subject

It's that glint of light from the eye that makes this work I think... and adds to the idea of someone surprised by torch-light. I like it.

This is almost the antithesis of a shot by Michael Ezra: I think this is the more human one...

With due respect to Tom's comments above, the nude with diaphonous wrap is really a pictorialist convention of the 19th century. You've done it very well: so if the aim was to set yourself an exercise, you did well. If you wanted to present something new (I think art aspires to that, whatever "fine" means), something more would be needed. There is almost a hint of that starting to happen: as though the model has lost some patience with the process and turned to confront the camera rather than looking passively off into the distance. It might be interesting to do ie a triptych, with first the completely classical shot, 2nd the turn to the camera, 3rd jumps off pedestal and hurls the partly eaten apple... or something along those lines. Bravo all the same for attacking the hard themes...

The ghost in the fur: the book Arthur Koestler never wrote (and if he had he might not have offed himself). Wonderful how lack of scale can be so disorienting (and those iron filings have come out to play again :-)

I'll have another go in an attempt to say why I like this (note, like, not go into transcendental raptures over).

 

Notice that most of the hotel room junk is stacked up on the RHS of the frame: the job-lot art (wonder if it was the same in every room?), the chairs, table, complimentary champagne (Dominique's boss pays for better hotels than I do). In comparison, the TV sits alone and is a vertex in a sideways triangle. The actor in the film is looking out and away from the junk with a slightly imploring air ("Francois, aide-moi de quitter ce bordel!")... so she stands (lies) in as a proxy for the hotel-stranded photographer. Grand art? Non, je n'y crois pas. But a pleasant and slightly wry appraisal of the hotel room aesthetic. I'd rather have it on my wall than, say, a girl falling off a sheep. Not because I doubt the technical felicity of that very well executed shot, but because I don't have much interest in sheep.

 

PS Tony's lament worked: I payed my $25 but am still waiting for my badge of moral adequacy...

I've been a fan of Dominique's for a while: I like the way this distills some order (the tension between the art on the wall and the TV) from a fairly chaotic setting & lighting arrangement. One question that has to be asked after last week's fiasco: was it good timing, or did you photoshop the TV screen in? I'd say it's a class photo either way... Felicitations!

Very nice exposure, good light, although the focus seems to be sharpest on the piece of cloth. Only problem: when the nude has been done so often, I think the pose has to have something to say. This one doesn't really communicate any message to me. But it's a first try and a bloody hard thing to do, so keep trying :-)

I like this, nice repetition of the head angle, but with the mother just a little out of focus as her daughter steps up for *her* event. Interesting expressions too.

Actually, because it's too big, when I opened it up it was cropped to be a much more powerful image. Try cropping it so it is just big anough to contain his head and arms.

Here's a BW version just for comparison. The losing the sky colour is a definite minus I think. Also the blown out bit at the top of the building looks more obvious than in the original... I don't know (and if anyone wants to call me a butcher again, save it)

That glint of flare from the window is part of it I think, The real strength is the interesting shape made between the building and the black bit. Personally I find the fish-eye barrel distortion a bit distracting and colour rather flattening. Did you try de-saturating it to monochrome? I'm confused by the earlier post about the colours being "warm". It's warm as blue goes, but that's like saying Denmark is warm relative to Greenland...

This is good... I like the 3 layers... people in park, old houses, cityscape...

Bravo! A B&W land/seascape that works :-)

Wonderful photo... great character in the subject and the context is set up beatifully.

In a way, the composition is traditional: the girl and the cross are roughly 1/3 & 2/3 of the way across the image. The "torn between church and the abyss" seemed a bit too obvious to me, but some people didn't get it, so maybe not :-)

 

I'm hesitant to criticise the tonality, since the jpegification seems to really hurt low-key shots like this. Yes, more light on the girl would have been nice, but without a lighting crew...

 

Now the intent/candid thing. It seems odd to me that people give greater credit to a photo which is a) the result of artistic intent rather than chance, and b) candid rather than posed (ie chance rather than intentional). If I was deciding whether to give the photographer a job, I might want to know how likely he was to be able to re-create an image like this, but if I just want to admire the image, I don't care. Is a sunset less beautiful for being the chance interaction of planetary alignment and atmospheric particles?

 

Similarly, if the photographer is sufficiently skilled to make a staged photo look like "a slice of life" (and I'm not using it for forensic purposes) again that's fine by me. Others may wish to judge the achievement against some set of rules (no cropping, candid, Tri-X, whatever) but in the end any set of rules is arbitrary. Personally I don't see the value in reducing photography to a game, but others may (and will :-) disagree

He's quite a character isn't he? Funny, but I never thought of him as quintessentially Australian: maybe of an older, more English Australia. Today, the bocce player in the other pic from the festival is probably more representative (especially on Lygon St, Melbourne's home of Italian restuarants).

Hi Mary, I'm using a laptop (and it's after 1am)... yep, my version is magenta. Partly because I was trying to make the beaks and claws pop a little without blowing out, not just the snow, but also the neck (?) feathers on one of the penguins... (not sure I like my crop either:-)

Nice photo... so of course I couldn't help but screw around with it in PS to see if I could lighten it up a bit. Brightened the whole thing up, increased the blue channel gamma a bit. Also cropped off that pesky iceberg and tried to move

the birds off center so they appeared to be stepping into the frame a little.

 

As ever, no disrespect to the original, just my taste etc etc.

Cheers,

Nicely done Jean. I will be showing this to Winnifred in the hope she will become motivated to pose for me, rather than running to hide under my bed when she sees the camera...

Merveilleux: j'avait pense' que le genre "reflection en eau" etait bien use', mais celle-ci est formidable: forte interaction des couleurs du chapel avec des flottants, alors qu'ils restent bien distingue's...