jastrzebski

Yet another 'pipe' photo, one of my favorites. More in the folder.

What do you think ? Thanks.

I ventured out in search for fall colours in my grey November city -

but this is the best I have found. Thanks.

Thanks for a good word.

 

I do not want to pose here as a super original photographer that is underestimated or anything like that. Far from it. I only want to make a general remark about photo.net rating and originality.

 

To be original in photography is a very difficult task. It becomes very obvious to anyone, even a laic, who enters photo.net - a few motifs keep repeating themselves day after day without end. Easiness to produce certain banal yet pleasing effects and photos is the source of this weakness in the art of photography. So most effort comes not in the search for originality but for the mastery of a standard theme/motif/subject. But the other thing is that many people evidently do not understand the very meaning of the word 'originality' . If they do not like the photograph, they rate 'originality' similarly to 'aesthetics'. Let's check it out - see ? - in 99% of ratings in all photos on photo.net there is NO difference between 'aesthetics' rate and 'originality' rate or the difference is small. Second proof comes from the fact that obviously not original photographs like yet another average vista from a mountain top or yet another sunset, or yet another bare tits (hundreds of them every week) is rated the same as a photograph that is unique, truly original - nothing similar to it in a month or longer.

I have seen some cork oaks this year in Sardinia and have to admit - they are a very tempting subject for photography. Alas! they do not grow in Poland. Regarding your question: for me there is slight imbalance here - the bottom part is a bit too 'heavy' for the rest. But is that important really ? The result is OK. The bottom 1/3 somehow serves as a base for the upper 2/3 of the photo that is pretty well balanced. When the rules are broken - then some disconcert is created and sometimes that paradoxically serves the composition well. Great photographs are made often against textbook rules of ideal proportions, balance, etc.

I agree with Ross. I download only the photos I like most and consider worth seeing again. I have downloaded this one. It is so well composed it is hard to belive that this is, in a way, a 'candid'. Thanks.

He was lurking in the shadow. With his light sabre raised above his

head. I could not resist to take a fast snapshot. A true candid.

 

More denizens of my city in the folder.

Although it is done with photographic technique the result is closer to painting than to photography. Is this good or is this bad ? Anyway, I like it.

This photo is grainy, with low contrast, let's admit it - it's

grayish, flat, almost dead and with little detail, sorry about that

folks, but how would you expect a Fallen Angel to look like ? A few

minutes after the fall, I mean, when there is the Realisation but not

the helpless Fury that is to come later.

Street gutter pipes. They do their job and watch the people passing

by day after day.

Thanks for comment. I guess that by the quality loss you mean hudge grain, low resolution, low contrast and the limited tonal range of this photograph (as well as many other of my photos from this folder). While I admire and envy the grainles, sublime quality of skin tones that masters like you can produce, I have been here after something else: to make a photoghraph less obvoiusly photographic, to remove the most photographic quality of a photograph - DETAILS - and yet not to change it into a graphic work without tones etc. I wanted still to produce a photograph. The "quality loss" to a certain extent was used here on purpose. It was done in the old fashioned chemical way, without digital help. Many people do not like it and I receive many 1/1 for aesthetics from those who think aesthetics = technical quality, and are used to academic precepts here, but still some like such photos a lot, seeeing quality not in the grain, tones, sharpness but somewhere else.

Thanks. Yet it is far from industrial. It is taken on the street of my city. The stones here belong to buildings aged by centuries, soaked with life and death of many generations, and the gutter pipes here, feed rain water to the mother earth, that is beneath the cold pavement stones we all walk upon. So seeming industrial this composition is in fact very organic. I tried to put this forth here by exposing the yin and yang principles present in the cold matter.

Thanks for your comment. Two things about contrast: 1/ This photo is slightly more dull than it could be, I know. It was taken on a cloudy day. Making it more contrasty would result in loss of highlight and shadow detail. 2/ Somehow I prefer less contrast in photos than most people do. Photos with perfect, textbook contrast look soooo academic. On the other hand slightly flat photos - if that matches subject&composition, although less nice to the eye (at first look), somehow are deeper on their compositional and emotional level. More painting like less graphic like. Besides I hate this simple maneuver that some 'artist' use you take a poor photo make it extremely contrasty almost posterised and it seems so 'artistic' then.

Universal paradigm. What do you say ?

Superb ! Much better than most of the 'bare tits or ass' photos in you folder.

... in their mute nostrils agony, carefully refined ...

Thank you for your comment. That is a good point. Yet I wanted the picture to be slighlty "dead". Frozen like, statue like. Full tonal range and contrast are good, but not always these academic- conventional marks of technical mastery/quality are justified by the emontional or compositional elements in the picture.

Something more wholesome today. Thanks for critique.

Take this.

A classic yet so well balanced that it deserves good rating. I would leave it BW or just slightly warmed up by sepia toner in the light and mid tones. The coloring here is not a good move (IMHO).

 

The yellow cast lowers the aesthetic value. Yet this photo prooves your great ability to compose.

This is truly a BLACK and WHITE photograph. Reverting to basics, in a graceful way indeed. Well done !

One day the Actor dies and although the Drama continues, all that is

left of HIM is his imprint on our eyes and minds - his death mask.

I do not agree with the above comments. If the dog is more central then the photo would have two distinct 'focuses' and apart from that the balance of the composition would suffer. Not to mention it would be less provoking. The true art lies in breaking the textbook rules. What I find weak - is the title - it forces to see the peculiarity in the shape of the shadow - it makes the photograph too narrative, less serious. I guess that was your intention - but I see it otherwise. Thanks for posting this photo.

Simple elements, enough to produce good quasi-abstract composition. With a pinch of art deco, I think. Well done !

They are small like like their banal pictures...