jon w.

Great character study.

Maybe it's an installation at the Biennale? In which case, it's a much less interesting shot (because it's the artist who has effectively created the composition). One of those cases where the nature of the subject matter directly affects the meaning.

I'm not so keen on the portraits either, but I'll make an exception for this one. Great.

Another favourite - everyone else will tell you to crop. Don't. But the blacks could be richer, and the contrast higher.

This one grabs me less, partly because the combination of an extremely fussy composition, and a fuzzy, grainy treatment grates. A lot of these actually look as though they've been shot at 3200. Have you printed them deliberately 'nasty'? This isn't 'wrong' - but there has to be a match between content and form/treatment.

A great folder, strikingly original in treatment, though for maximum effect you might want to cut a couple of the weaker shots. Technically, some of these shots look a little fuzzy - maybe because of a less-than-perfect lens, or handholding (?). This will get you lots of tut-tutting from some people on this site, but it bothers me less when the composition and conception are so strong.

This is one of my favourites - is the blurring a deliberate 'quotation' from Capa's D-Day shots?

A really striking shot, playing off surface and depth against each other, with the violence 'frozen' and contained on the surface, under the inscription of 'peace'. We enter the space behind only 'through' the glass. Our eye completes the arrested trajectory of the stones or fists thrown at the glass. Also a sobering explanation. Great PJ work, great shot independently of context.

A marvellous capture, and great use of colour and shadow.

Of course the person should be there. The concept is actually not particularly original - photographs about 'looking' are a classic theme - but what makes it is the contrast between the cool monochrome environment, and the vivid splash of red.

Jason,

I don't have time to comment properly on your work, but I shall try to return to it next time I am on PN. For now, I shall just say that it deserves a detailed and intelligent response ....

Great combination / counterpoint of elements.

I agree. Fantastic.

Great - wonderfully sharp, and colour reinforces composition effectively.

Two striking images. I look forward to seeing more.

A barn in Venice? Boatshed perhaps?

Another great shot Ralph - and the blown reflection is good not only because of the texture, but because it exactly balances the dark spot of the girl.

I agree with you Hool about the 'noise' and interference on the glass - and that it is extremely interesting to try to incorporate noise into the picture's meaning - to paradoxically make it part of the 'signal'. I've also tried to do this on a few of my street images.

This is also great, and quite an erotic image, but I actually prefer the other one, even though this is superficially more striking.

Great capture.

Unfortunately this invites comparison with some very similar images by Harry Callahan - and they're better.

But an interesting experiment anyway.

This is excellent. Really original take on a basic genre, with very imaginative staging. Because she's lying down, the body looks subtly different than in most shots of nudes, because gravity is affeting the flesh differently, and this adds to the unsettling, defamiliarized effect. There are all kinds of jarring, contradictory hints under the surface. The position of her feet and heels, together with the subliminal suggestion of her blurred hand, almost made me think she was in mid-jump at first glance (whih makes no 'sense' in conjunction with the hands over the face). Or look at it again and she's levitating in some kind of sensory deprivation tank. Then you read the explanation.

Also an unsettling erotic element - just a hint, but it's there because her sexual organs are at dead centre in the photograph and quite prominent under the underwear (hope this doesn't make me sound like a pervert). This unsettles the comfortable, sanitised emphasis on abstract 'beauty' that characterises most nudes, but remains a hint: it's not vulgar or offensive as it would be in a pornographic image.

Anyway, there are so many things going on, and all of them are slightly skew and contradictory in a good way, undermining or playing with the 'codes' that underlie most nudes, and make them safe and boring and inoffensive.

Original technique is used to subvert genre convention and produce an original image.

Isn't it a bird chick that's fallen out of the nest and died? That would make sense of the title anyway. But what about the guy with the sunglasses? He might be there just for juxtaposition, or for scale, but I don't think he's especially interesting.

I think there is a lot of potential in this and many other pictures you have taken.

For your hands and faces project, you should look at the 'anonymous portraits' Walker Evans shot on the subway - same idea, and same problem/theme of repetition (whehter on sees it as a problem dependson whether one thinks the concept is inherently interesting).

Yes, lovely shot with minimal means. Show it's possible to make a great photo from 'boring' subject matter or anonymous architecture. I much prefer this to the overstrident 9/11 stuff.

Lovely exposure and print, with great tonal range, but there is nothing orginal or distinctive about the subject or composition. It would be a great image - if there weren't a zillion like it in the umpteen coffee table books on Venice. The other one is much better.

I thought I'd commented on this before. Maybe you reposted it. In any case, a great shot.

This is intriguing, though rather indecipherable. Can you explain what's going on and why you like this?