Brian Carter

?? I wrote a comment a couple days ago- where'd it go?

I thought you should dodge her chest more... No, no, that's not right! heh-heh

I said this was a shot many, any stock photogs would be proud to have in their collection. Graphic, vital, expressive, inviting... A beauty. Congratulations. Make sure you put a copyright on this one.

I've read photogs who won't show their work here for fear of having it ripped off. The best protection for your rights is to have published the image first- and Photo.net offers just that.

Whaat?

Well, i know what I mean.

I could spend P-shop hours dealing with this kind of damage, and I want to stay full-frame... So why not just embrace the conditions under which the images were made? Work on tonal range and sharpness and forget all the repairs - if the story is there, why not?

Otherwise many will never be processed. Too time-consuming.

What do you think?

Some of my negs are pretty bad- I would repair the scratch on Ruth's

nose, even if i decided to leave the other scratches & stains.

Looking in dismay at the scratches, stains, and light leaks that plague my early b&w negs, I'm considering just leaving them. I could convert a lot more negatives to digital if I just wiped them off and scanned in what I had, warts and all. Just minimum dust removal.

The raw processing is part of the image, yes?

I'll post others. What do you think?

That's what i'm talking about - geometry. Lines intersect, but they point to, they direct... Kind of like in life - where moving in a straight line is preferable to just hovering around on the edges, connected only by a few points - upsetting the local rhythm.

Great image, great separation. Elliott Erwitt would be proud.

Whoa. Did you turn your lens on the sobbing families? This is photo essay stuff. I think Robert Franks 'The Americans' had a bus shot on the cover. People in buses just look lonely. Maybe a slightly closer crop would help the story.

 

Great shot! Is it full frame? I'd like to see lighter tones on the skin, and a touch more contrast overall. This scene would have more zone I & zone X than was developed here.

Ah! Those large blank spaces you used to favor pared down to a supporting role. The separation of elements, the tension & balance... this is a winner. One for the portfolio.

This is a great image, yet common in a comforting way. All your recent images show confident control over what fills the frame- good proportions, interesting negative space, and (mostly) awareness of the highlights. Ultimately, it's the shapes we find in photos that draws us in, and you've got a potent geometry going on ...

That's a long arm, with extraordinary fingers. Textural and sensual.

Yet reaching for something it cannot grasp. Longing, anxious.

I know the feeling. And I accept it.

 

From just a quick glance at your portfolio and it's amazing contents I know you are a master of the light. This one is the exception, then, as it's staged feel looks to come from a bit too much fill flash. Highlights in the shadow, and competing shadows, give this image the feel of a museum diorama.

Probably the people who chose it for the front page had already shown the rest of your stunning work...

This is an excellent example of how a few basic elements used well can be as evocative as any image. And as rare. I'll come back to your portfolio later, I need standards. I have just begun scanning black & white negatives (4 days ago!), and it's clear that I could waste a ton of time if I don't figure out how to get best results.

But I'm guessing that this is a digital image, yes? Some of the same consideratons apply- Do you shoot in RGB and desaturate? Or shoot in grayscale, looking at a histogram maybe? With my Epson 4990 flatbed (I tested against Minolta Dimage IV) I set 'b&w negs' as the source (I know. D-uh. But most sources suggest you try all 3) rather than b&w positive or RGB.

You may not be concerned with this. No matter, i'll be back. Congratulations.

From my first scans of black & white negatives. It could take me years to go through my books if I don't refine my methods.

These are scanned as b&w negs; I tried RGB and it looked like it was gonna take 15 mins. so I stopped. I tried b&w positive and the images looked like gray mud.

What frustrates me most (along with curved film), is the middle grays. In the darkroom compressed tonal values mean no black and/or no white. But these scans have full black & full white, with the middle values flattened!

I had no problem making a nice print of this image in the darkroom, but have to push levels all over the place to get any pop out of it digitally.

If you scan black & white film, what do you do? Thanks.

I scanned my first b&w negs this weekend. With an Epson 4990 flatbed and 35mm holder (I do 3 strips at once). Frustrating that the film isn't held flat; and one location on the scanner bed produces double images...

I've uploaded images from 2 contact sheets, and I have about 400 more I could do, so I want to learn how to get the best results. I scanned at 600dpi, but the Epson software allows me to choose 10Kdpi!

I set dust reduction to Low, and turned off sharpening and grain reduction. If you scan Black & White, please respond. Thanks.

That's the life in found objects- their connection, the relationship. They are each, with you, there at a moment and together. I believe the drama in a shot like this lies in the separation of those inherently connected parts. Even the couple places where shapes intersect; the motor home and prow of the boat; remain isolated. Like the way strangers maintain a calculated distance when they must exist together. The motor home and tree are a good story themselves, anchoring this uneasy alliance.

Ironic that a scene like this can seem to come so naturally. You look at it, the elements are there, you raise the camera and click. Later that day/week, you marvel at how easy it was. Easy also to put aside the fact that most shots, your eyeball needs to do laps around the viewfinder, arranging lines. Years later, you wonder why you only have a small collection (of scenes like this) that have the necessary dynamic tension. Rural America; out of time, and timeless. A keeper.

I'd like to see what more air around it looked like, especially sky. Is this full frame? The caption- cute but leading. That means limiting. show don't tell. I probably wouldn't have mentioned it but you boldfaced me.

Birch trees in Colorado; near Moab, Utah.

"Not a Polaroid..."? See my portfolio for an explanation.

New York, New York.

New York, New York.

New York, New York.

Is there a word missing from your first sentence? And even if there is, please explain.

Just wondering, given the subject matter, whether it would be in bad taste to tell mr. Falkenstine to get a life?

Do you have a personal rule about only using full frame images? I understand if you do; I feel that way a lot. However (if you draw the line at using Transform in P-shop), I would crop out the top bit of red brick to help keep the eye focussed on the window. That and you end up with a more architecturally balanced image (i.e. the base being larger than the crown, etc.).

Sorry to carp so early amongst so many great shots (just having picked a photo at random), but the thick black border is so similar to the graphic elements in the shot I find it distracting. The sun, the colors, the drama in the window, the small square balanced on the bottom edge; I believe all would fare better with just an elegant line rather than those bars.

I wouldn't bother to write if this weren't eye-catching...

Ah, David, I could get busy on so many of your images... just go sit in them, look around, start the movie, no problem. I don't know what i'm saying to say that it would be too easy, but that is the case. We tend to cover over the obvious facts when they make us feel uncomfortable, i'm afraid; and i've grown increasingly concerned about the necessity to blanket most emotions, lest we be left open to the realities that surround us and that threaten to move us off our comfortable custom made retreats. So, thanks for the catalyst. I'll be back, when i'm more comfortable... (ha!)

Btw, I believe there is a typo in the last sentence of your bio.

To me the first obvious reason the foreground is off-center is to include the cloud/smoke drifting off to the right of the targets. Kinda looks like a battle might be taking place somewhere on the other side. The grassy hillocks beyond, symbol of so many bloody ridges taken and retaken for the price of bodies torn asunder and families shattered. The posters stand in ironic cover for the senselessness of the warfare; the shooting public, so far from the damage wrought by the instruments they idolize; yet participating in the kind of recreational thrill that the profiteering industries of war in this country count on in their quest to keep the sale of killing machines the #1 business (no other is even close...) of this great country.

The layered history of the changing targets; the backlighting provided by explosion(s); the burned surface and bullet holes (just how do you miss by That much?); the scrub growth so common just upland of a beach invasion...

I don't know about anyone else, but this makes me nervous, and that means it works.