mph

Thanks for your comment.

 

Going more than 10 minutes would require a completely dark (rather than twilight) sky, which would result in blown-out lava glow. The lava flowing into the ocean is the primary subject, and so that would be unacceptable.

 

It is worth noting that many, many more stars are visible in the actual transparency.

Regarding the softness, assuming that it's not just a poor scan, I would say that either your tripod was not completely stable (wind?) or you have a slight focus error. The true infinity focus might not be at the end of the focus helical, for example.

 

In order for the memorial lights to stand out more against the sky, you'd need more "stuff" (haze, dust, mist) to scatter the light toward you. Since you're so far away, that might degrade the skyline as well. Can't win. Actually, scattered light is generally polarized, so a polarizing filter might accentuate the beams relative to the sky, provided it is correctly oriented.

I approve of the negative space, but I don't care so much for the wear patterns on the tines. Reminds me of oil company ads with post-mortems of bearings and pistons. Maybe a brand-new fork instead?

Star trails over the Kilauea Lava flow, Hawaii Volcano NP. There are

interruptions in the trails because I had to cover the lens when

morons shone their flashlights directly toward the camera.

The central highlight (of sky and its reflection on the wet ground) draws my eye too strongly; I find that it takes deliberate effort to look away, especially when I'm trying to study the hooded figure to the right.

Paul: Be careful putting 'shrooms in a film scanner. Everything I've read says it's bad to have fungus on your lens.

Justin: That reminds me of something. I was taking a photography class and a talented participant brought in a piece that was a 35mm contact sheet (6 strips of 6). The contact sheet formed an image of a wall of a room; that is, each of the 36 exposures was a close-up of part of the wall, and the array of them showed the whole wall. I thought that was pretty clever, and is sort of like what the scanner does.

 

(Nobody denounced it as not-photography, by the way.)

A pinhole is not a lens by any definition I can find in a dictionary (including the OED) or a physics text. It does not focus the light onto the film plane; that's why you do not need to focus a pinhole camera!

 

I do not understand why people are in such a hurry to exclude this art from the category of "recording light" (that is, "photography"). Balkanizing the field into "Film photography with lens," "film photography with pinhole," "photogram with film," "photogram with scanner," "digital photography with lens," and so forth seems absurd to me. I have more interest in some of these things than others, but, man, people have been doing weird things with photographic materials for so long that I'd think people could accept it by now!

I was going out to photograph on a partly cloudy day after it rained. As I was climbing the stairs of the parking garage, I was struck by this reflection in a puddle on the landing. This negative turned out to be the only decent one of the day, and serves as a reminder that we can find beauty where we least expect it.

 

This image is faithful to a darkroom print. The manipulations are minimal: The easel is rotated 180 degrees, there's a bit of dodging to even out the sky density, and the tone is cold of neutral. The black border arises naturally from the shape of the "window" reflected in the puddle.

So, why isn't it photographic?

 

Because it's a digital process? We've seen plenty of those before.

 

Because it doesn't involve a lens? Neither does pinhole photography.

 

Because the detector moves across the image? So does a scanning back for a view camera. And if you use a focal plane shutter at high speed, the image moves across the film in much the same way.

 

Because there's no image-forming optic, not even a pinhole? Man Ray laid stuff atop photographic materials. He's in my photography books.

 

What's the problem? The history of photography is replete with alternative forms of image-making. It seems to me that everything that could make this image "not photography" has been done by photographers years ago.

Presumably the things you have no reason to see. Asking what was cropped is like asking what was excluded from the viewfinder. I don't see why anyone would criticize a piece because the aspect ratio of the finished image doesn't match the film.

Help! The Black Border Police are dragging me away! Aieeeee!

I find that when I upload images here, they are recompressed with more JPEG compression, degrading the image quality. The effect is especially notable in images with a lot of sky. (I uploaded a version without obvious JPEG artifacts, which was a much larger file than the one you get.)

I hear this all the time, and I don't believe it. Abstraction obscures communication. Challenging the viewer obscures communication.

The last photo class I took, it was clear from the critiques that the viewer will virtually always perceive a different message than what the artist intended (assuming he wanted to communicate a specific message in the first place). The successful pieces admitted a great variety of interpretations. They spoke strongly to the viewer, because the viewer could "find" a meaning that resonated with him.

Communicating a message is best accomplished by limiting yourself to concrete, easily understood, even clichéd images. They will challenge nobody. The viewer will instantly get your point, and waste no time exploring your image.

Look at the broad swaths of light and dark, green and yellow. Those are what draw my eye; I find something interesting in all parts of the frame. The flowers are irrelevant to me.