ellis_vener_photography

I want a print of it! 

This looks like an Audubon painting!

Considering how "quiet" and still the composition of this photo is, it has a lot of visual power. Very nicely done.

This is very fine. The aerial perspective, composition, use of light, and play of shapes against a color field makes it a very powerful photograph. I wish I had made it.

It could be my monitor is off, but I'm seeing a bit of a pink or magenta cast along her hair. The book or object she's looking at is definitely pinkish, tho' this could be reflected from her clothing. Ditto the forearm.

What is going on in the hair is a result of many days at the swimming pool this summer and some weird JPEG compression artifact. The glossy apges of the little magazine she is reading is reflecting pink from her shirt (angle of reflection = angle of incidence) and the bounce from her shirt lighting up the inside of her arm with a pink "fill" light.

In terms of technical stuff like details, noise, etc., it's difficult to tell from a small JPEG.

NO kidding!

The stark lighting and hard shadows makes for an interesting alternative to the familiar soft approach to casual portraiture of children.

Well That is reality for you -taking you somewhere to a result you didn't expect. What motivated me to make the photo was her expression of concentration, her hand gestures, the play of light and shadow, light, the range of color, and the geometry of the composition.

natural light portrait

the shaft handle is a very definite presence in the photo.

Thanks for the comments so far.

 

Bruce I think that would mean the shadows would have been elongated and distorted what I think are the near perfect spatial relationships betwee nthe umbrella support arms and the ribs of the umbrella.

 

Right now , as is, I see a couple of perceptual jokes going on in the interplay of umbrella surface and the projected shadow, and with the color relationships too. And at the same time it is also a 'pretty picture".

A found still life, waiting to be recognized. Playing with light and

space.

Spring sprang and the cherry blossomed

Photograph made 03-18-2008 ?Ellis Vener.

Astounding!

 

I really hope and pray that you have registered your copyrights on this photo.

I made about ten exposures, each is unique. I now wish I'd taken a couple of hundred to make a little QuickTime video of the light as it changed over a couple of minutes of moving and rippling. The light itself was reflected into the pool from a single mirrored window of a skyscraper across the street. The pool itself was in shade. I first noticed the light as a bright patch on the water as I was talking with my in-laws. I excused myself from the conversation and went over to investigate and saw this beautiful thing happening. Just shows that it pays to always have a camera with you. It makes for a really lovely big (20" x 20" ) print.

 

 

light textures: found one afternoon in a swimming pool.

Daylight and a glass of beer

skykedelic! (Yes I do know how to spell psychedelic). Reminds me of some of the radically rendered and processed landscapes in Kubrick's version of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

There is more discussion of this image at

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Jr9B

 

and

 

in the New York Times @ http://tinyurl.com/37vq9s

Wow! Good work!

About mid-morning an unexpected guest showed up on the deck in our back yard. I b elieve

it to me an adult redtailed hawk (i'm not a birder and am probably wrong about gender and

age, but I'm pretty sure of the species. stayed on thisnewel post for about 45 minutes

checking things out before it flew off. She was no more than about 12 feet away from the

house.

 

Tech details: Roughly a half frame crop from a 1ds mk.2 image shot at IS0 400, (about f/5.6

@ 1/400th) with an 85mm f/1.8 lens.

looking at this photo and then at his gallery is proof of something an art director once said to me: "Everyone can take one decent photo. The problem is that few people can take two and even fewer can take three."

"My two cents' is Amercan slang for "my opinion" as in " My opinion is really only worth what you paid for it -- not very much."

The idea of naturally occurring "split frame" compositions to create a diptych isn't new, but you probably know that. What makes this kind of photograph work is the interaction in the two halves of the juxtaposition. One frame either comments -generally in a comic or ironic manner --on what is going on in the other half of the composition , or how viewing them together creates a more powerful 3rd image than either "single" frame alone or if the device that splits the image (in this case the column in the middle of the compositions was not there. Ideally both halves of the composition should be able to stand on their own as separate images but that is rarely possible especially in candid photography. Elliot Erwitt does this kind of thing in lots of pictures.

 

I just don't really see any of that happening in this photograph but it is definitely a good idea to keep working with.

Interesting use of soft lighting and soft coloration and human expression with the emotionally hard intellectual twist of her wearing handcuffs.

I gave it a 7/7. A very strong image! I'd like to see you re-do it with more adventurous & intriguing lighting on the guys.

like an Edward Hopper charcoal sketch or a Tom Waits song.