jeff_lawson

"Prayer gives strength and opens doors. If it does not open prison

cell doors, it opens the hearts of those inside." - Gerhard Hamm

i would like to attribute the caption for this photo to Minor White

(i thought it was fitting)

i never fully appreciated how tedious is was to digitally hand-paint

black and white pictures until i did this picture. i've done both

digital and oil hand-painting before, but this was more detail

oriented than i had attempted before.

an interesting character that i came across while taking pictures

with a buddy in the middle of a forest (ironically, the same buddy

that is pictured raping the bear a couple of pictures back). Turns

out the strange guy was from the other side of the country, and got

lost in the middle of the forest while looking for a tea party. And

people think that I'AM weird.

This photo is dedicated to the Photo.net "professional critics"

You know who they are (the people who have critiqued thousands of

photo's often giving poor marks and making anal observations, but for

one reason or another, never feeling then need to upload some photo's

themselves) I think the critique is an essential tool for any

photographer to improve, but it seems like a lot of people just like

to use it as a blind media (a crutch perhaps) to make themselves seem

technically proficient without ever having the need to prove

themselves. Photography is an art form. Art is subjective. Art is

expressive. Art is individual. The last thing people need to hear,

when placing their photo's before thousands of people is "kind of a

good idea, but your colour gradient would benefit from a saturation

of approximately 35%". I mean, give me a break. It's like saying

that "the Moma Lisa was a good sketch, but she should have had bigger

tits". I'm not bitter or anything, but i just want to encourage the

professional critics to go ahead and bare their artistic souls as

well, to see how it is for the rest of us. I feel better now.

Thanks.

my apologies to the Beatles for my obscene theft of a great song

title

Go Ringo!

I was going to add text to this one, but I figured the vultures would

pick me apart for it so I left it.