stanley_rogouski

This is a fairly simple photo but it works because of the following reason

The shadows on the right wall seem larger and more more substantial then the latticework producing them.

That gives the illusion of a presence in matter beyond the matter itself, which is, in many ways, perfect for a religious structure.

In addition, we cannot see what's producing the shadows on the floor.

It's hard to believe they could build something like this 15 centuries ago.

I like the way your photo brings out the staggering complexity of this building, especially the number of arches and arched windows.

The shadow across the floor, the contrast of the arch to the square window and the positioning of the worshipper make it work.

This photo would, perhaps, work better in a large print.

The strongest part of it is the dark blue sky. The weakest is the water, but this might be due to the fact that not all the detail you recorded comes out on my laptop screen.

I generally don't like highly manipulated photos but the dark blue sky in the upper right hand corner saves it for me.

This is a very succesfully photographic imitation of a certain style of modernist painting.

I'm not quite sure I understand precisely how the photo relates to Chavez's victory.

Are you, perhaps, implying that Chavez, like the old urban political machines in the USA's past, gets his votes by handing out Christmas turkeys, food baskets, and other small favors to the voters?

I like this photo more than I like the more recent one. The angle works better on the benches.

I actually don't like the way the (the baptismal font?) up front dominates the photo. The shadows to the right and left distract. And the base looks a little too much like a roulette table.

It's an interesting stab at an ultra wide angle shot at a church, but I'd like to see it from a few more angles.

Is it possible either to get closer to the object up front so that it, and not the base dominate the photo?

Or, perhaps, would it be more interesting to try to photograph the object up front a bit more off center?

This strikes me as very similar in theme to the Photo of the Week a few weeks ago, the one which showed three Muslim women in traditional religious garb looking at a tourist in a bikini.

But I think the fact that the subject is male adds to the photo's strength. The man from the traditional, patriarchal Jewish culture is lost, even in a nominally Jewish state.

The fact that the three girls are essentially faceless adds a subtle touch. It focuses the attention on the man on the right.

Great photo. Looks almost like an abstract.

I thought the Coptics were only in Egypt.

It was 90 degrees here in New Jersey today. This photo makes me realize how much I want the fall to start.

Amusing even if staged.

Fitting title. I thought of a Dickens novel when I saw the thumbnail.

It's an unusual shot of a familiar landmark.

But it's also got a Planet of the Apes/Sci Fi quality about it, as if it's a frame from a movie where the hero goes forward in time to find NYC overgrown with vegetation.

The hijab wearers do not at all have the look of, I wish I could do that. These women likely have the thought, "what a skank!" in their head. I'm not sure why people assume that these women are oppressed and hate their lives and want to wear nothing in public. If you are out and about with your friends, having a good time, and walk past what clearly is a prostitute, you would possibly have the same reaction. Do you wish you could be as free to sell your body for sex? If you do, then wow, but you likely do not.

I wouldn't make these assumptions myself. In fact, I can't imagine any more than a tiny percentage of the women I see with tatoos being prostitutes.

But the fact that the photo provokes this kind of comment would seem to indicate that it's a good photo.

The photographer simply captured a moment and we're all reading our own assumptions into it.

The first woman, is she talking on a cell phone? Was the bikini woman pasted in? Does she look embarassed. Or does she, as you say, look amused and scornfull?

There's really no way of knowing.

In the levant and turkey there are many "aryan looking" people, without dye jobs or contacts. I was born blonde myself, and I'm of turkish/syrian descent.

What ethnicity hasn't marched an army through Asia Minor at some point in the past 3000 years?

And the first woman with the head scarf is not using a cellphone,she is just laughing and tries to hide her laugh with a little or may be more feeling of shame.


That was my first impression. But when people started suggesting she was talking on a cell phone, I thought "well that makes sense too."

I am a photographer from Iraq, a place used to be a heaven of security for the average citizen who do not care about politics, and this state have turned into hell after the ninth of April 2003. After that date the peoples have turned into each other, the killing have started based on racial, religious, ethnic, political, occupational, and every body have started to denies the others right to speak,to govern, to act, to vote, and to work, it is just the greatest chaotic mess ever happened in the history of the whole area....It is simply my dream for my people and my country that I express it in this image.


I like the photo. But I don't know if the photo alone expresses the idea that "I'd like to see Iraq become a relatively stable country like Turkey."


I think a lot of this depends on perception. I live just outside of NYC and have always just taken it for granted that various ethnic and religious groups can more or less coexist.

I was waiting in line at Starbucks the other day. In the same line with me (a secular American who was raisd Christian) was a woman in traditional Islamic dress and an Orthodox Jew with a Yarmulke. None of us gave the other a second thought.

But in the context of your comments, I find myself sobered. Will the United States always be as stable as prosperous as it is right now? With the Republicans and the media trying to whip up hatred between Muslims and Christians, I realize just how fragile society can be.

I understand the idea of the meeting of two cultures, but it is not a strong, dramatic representation of it.

I definitely see what Andrew means but that almost seems like part of its strength. The photo capture a moment where two cultures are refusing to have any contact with each other. I honestly don't know how women in Islamic dress and secular dess normally interact in whatever country this is (and I assume Turkey). If you showed a photo of a guy in a Yankee shirt buying a lens from a Hasidic Jew at B&H Photo nobody would give it a second thought. But there wouldn't be the same gesture of embarassment or sense that it's forbidden for a religious Muslim woman to look at a secular woman in a bikini.

Why is it a good picture?

Timing. One second earlier or later and you wouldn't have had the juxtaposition of the first woman's embarassed gesture of the hand in the same frame as the woman in the bikini.

Why does it work?


Partly timeliness. Muslim vs. non-Muslim relations have been much in the news as of late. When the hysteria over Islam in American finally dies down, the picture may actually appear to be a bit more banal. But right now it captures the zeitgeist.

Or how could it be improved?

I don't think it can. It works perfectly for what it is. The fact that the last woman's sweatpants are wet below the knee (indicating that she's been swimming in those clothes) is a wonderful little detail.

I came to this photo after looking at the rest of your portfolio so I looked at it with the blue mosque in the back of my head.

 

But something about this photo has a religious/Islamic feel to it even though there's no explicit religious imagery in it.

Or is it an old palace?

I don't normally like street photography using a telephoto, but you seem to make it work here.

...

Looking at this makes me wonder if it looked exactly the same way hundreds of years ago.

Two things make this shot, the way he's removed his glasses as though posing for a portrait and the tonality. His face looks as if it's getting some of the sun from the outside and the fluorescent lights add to the shot by featuring the man's face instead of ruining the shots (as fluorescent lights often do). It's the kind of shot that makes me wish I had more of a film background.

The woman with the weapon (the soloist) is trying to maintain a serious demeanor. The women with the backpacks (the chorus) aren't. The photo was taken with a D700 but cropped to a 6 x 6 dimension. Their sleeves are rolled up in an almost identical way.