gregscott

A funny title. An alternate: Abandon hope, all cows who enter here!

I like the strong simple graphic composition, the horizontal sunlight, and more, but I wish it were sharper overall.

Bizarre colors! Is this the way it really was? If so, that's amazing, if no, that's creative!

A simple, powerful image.

I like the y/b/g color combo.

I don't recognize the species of the hummer. What is it?

The orange crown and gorget color picks up nicely with the lower part of the lily. But I don't recognize this color on any US species.

If you don't know the species, where did you shoot it?

I really like the color here. The saturation gives me the feel of old slide images.

In some ways, it's off limits to comment on the model, since unless you have lots of money to hire models, you have little control of that aspect of the image. However, in her case, I would say that her very strong/square jaw line gives her a sense of strength along with her beauty, and that conceptually goes well with the strength of the iron reinforced heavy wooden doors.

A message here that she has been well protected, and also is well able to take care of herself. It's a good, secure feeling.

 

 

 

A beautiful bird, a remarkable interaction, and a wonderful photo.

Excellent.

Thanks for sharing this photo. Have you considered doing an exihibition of photos taken with this technique?

This made be one of the most artistic commercial art photographs I've ever seen. You expect to see it on a billboard soon!

What can I say? The only possible thing wrong with this photo is that I couldn't take it. That may give it a green tint.

Just a simple addition

I think that some questions would be answered by a higher resolution image. Perhaps the car is on the dock so it can be shipped. The shadow on the sailor's back seems to be cast by a block of wood that he is carrying.

 

As to the somewhat "disconnected" composition, it's as if threee different stories had randomly crossed paths. Novelists seem to be able to make this work, and perhaps some of us can make the photo work by creating connections as we view the photo.

 

From a pragmatic point of view, the particular glance of the sailor and the billowing of the skirt/sail makes this an interesting photo, and hard to obtain. If the car in the scene confuses it, that may be unfortunate, but without staging such a shot, you take what opportunity arises. This photo has a documentary feel, to me, not a feeling of a staged shot. This said without reading the prior text, just my reaction to the photo itself.

All 3 are "innies".

To me it seems a shame for a gaudy necklace to steal the show from such a beautiful model. I would think a simpler necklace would leave the impact on the person. Here, you're not sure what is the subject of the shot, the person or the necklace. And it does seem either/or, which is my point. Perhaps that, itself, makes the shot "interesting".

Great sharpness where it counts, good wing blur, interesting composition.

I like it. What species is it, do you know?

The system won't let me rate this high enough today. In real estate it's location, location, location. In this sort of photography, it's sharpness, sharpness, sharpness. And man, you've got it! Not to mention an incredible model, and a great perch, and a sweet pose.

Get closer if you can...

A macro lens or adapter may be necessary.

The lower left hand corner, with the fern, is the nicest part, with the curving lower and upper branch.

A fine image. Good title too.

Then I assume you used flash. How you avoided ghost images of the wings in this photo amazes me. Any comment, or explaination?

How'd you get such a high-speed photo? It doesn't look like high speed flash.

Please give some specific data. Sharp wings, bright background, no ghosts, no evidence of any photoshop cheating...

Enquiring minds want to know!

I like the colors in this shot, but perhaps not in combination with the eyes. I like that there are eyes behind the mask, but for some reason would prefer to see ONLY the eye, not the corner of they lower eyelid.

Colorizing the eye color would seem to be a legitimate "cheat" on this shot. I wonder if decolorizing the eye would be interesting. I think the composition is excellent, and in my opinion the positives in this shot well outweigh the few negatives. Personally, I wonder if perhaps the "type" of shot, a "mask" shot, indicates that this is a money saving, and work saving device to perform studies when models are not handy. I certainly could not afford a model with any frequency, and so such devices would be a way to practice the art at lower expense, perhaps. This should NOT be seen as detracting from the value of the shot as an artistic expression, however. Just some rambling thoughts, perhaps they relate to the purpose to the POW.

Photographers gone wild. A change from the usual soaring hawk? Funny, yet conveys the joy we find in our shooting. Extremely athletic, as well.

Excellent idea, and very fun image. I wonder moving the camera a little to the left would have kept the composition more "freeform". Here it looks like the main light is coming from exactly 90 degrees from the camera, in the horizontal plane.

I don't have any idea if that would be better, but it would be interesting to see. Did you shoot it that way too, and decide that this was better? Great DOF, color, background, etc, etc. My "nit" on the lighting is exactly that.

I can't give advanced critique, but I can give some naive reactions:

1. With no evident power source, the situation seems odd. Could be your intent.

2. The pile of broken bulbs may distract from the central element, which seems to me to be the glowing filament and its smoke.

3. WIth no small shards of glass, the scene seems even more unreal. I'd almost rather see a humble ceramic socket, a hammer, and a shattering bulb, with the same mushroom cloud.

In total, the result seems rather contrived. You're not capturing a "natural" phenomenon, you're simulating it. Perhaps that's part of your conceptual basis.

So far, my critique has been more conceptual than artistic.

 

On the technical side, there's a lot to admire here. The lighting of the smoke, the balance with the light from the filament, and the balance with the lighting of the broken bulbs are all in excellent balance, very "seamless". I'm sure that this is difficult. The color is excellent. I dislike the watermark. (of course? I'm assuming it's placed as an intentional "spoiler".)

 

On the artistic side, I'm less qualified to comment. The composition, while complex, seems to work. I think a simpler composition with a more obvious relationship between the elements would work better, but that's gettting back into the conceptual issues.

 

All in all, I find this a provocative photo, with much to commend it to thoughtful study.

 

Perhaps my naive comments will help provoke more knowledgable comments from other more "illuminated" sources!

The shoes and the train in the back ground are a little "too much" in this photo, I think. The model is so pretty, and the pose so good, that I'd rather see her barefoot, maybe in sandels, to go with her casual dress better. I'd also like to see her whole body including all of her legs. The bush is also a bit distracting, but I DO like the dandelions. I guess I feel that the subject and the pose are so outstanding that I don't want anything to detract from that whatsoever. Very nice photo.

using a view camera could create an "offset" in the photograph to help prevent the camera's reflection from being in the photo. I wonder if that's part of the technique? One thing that made this interesting for me is the fact that the 2D image is ambiguous regarding the 3D reality. I realized immediately what I was seeing, except that I thought that it was inverted, with regard to depth. That makes it quite confusing to figure out what's going on. It's much simpler to understand when you see it "right". I particularly enjoy the reflections of the reflections of the lights in some very small portions of the photograph. Somehow, if you study those regions, the geometry of the subject "snaps" into detailed understanding of the perspective and depth of the subject matter. These things make the photograph particularly interesting and challenging to view, to me.

In my opinion:

using a dead (or live!) bee fastened to a blade of grass would be no "sin", just a creative technique to make it possible to even get a shot like this.

The other photos posted in this thread also show me clearly that the dark tips of the wing feathers are exactly that, not an artifact of awkward digital editing. That merely increases my awe of these photos.

The fact that a photographer cannot compose an image of a rapidly flying bird, and must rely on the law of averages to get the shot does NOT detract from the artistry of the shot, nor does it demote the photographer from artist to mere craftsman. Where difficult and painstaking technical techniques are required, and where a worthy subject is chosen, and careful "editing" of the output is performed to select the most aesthetic compostion, color, and lighting, the photographer is exercising artistic skills.

As a sometimes specialist in high speed flash photography of hummingbirds in flight, which are much easier to photograph because of their habits, I can look on this photograph with respect for it's awesome beauty and technical mastery.

For those who are familiar with it, it seems that this discussion in large part is a form of the C. P. Snow controversy. He asserts that the technical/scientifice culture is necessarily divergent and becoming distinct from the rest of culture. As you might guess from my comments, I disagree. I think that those who cannot absorb the culture of either "side" are deficient, and that those at culture's apex will always be renaissance personalities who are able to bind together multiple disciplines. I think that this photo illustrates just such an artistic process.