AJHingel

Hi Jack, yet another of your marvellous shots from your home town of Osaka (if I'm not mistaken). And yet another of your shots which shows your mastery of composition.

The image is centred to the extreme and totally static, which is intriguing because of the "passing" of a salaryman. However his movement has been freezed by the white abstract form in the lower right corner where the hypotenuse is parallel to his back.

Everything is fixated so the forms and beautiful play of colors are left for us all to contemplate in peace.

Deserve a print in big format, hanged on a wall.

Human deconstruction. Social comment.
Nicely made and maybe more serious than fun.

The human factor and the question of scale are surely arguments for including human physical presence within an architectural photo especially when we want to underscore the functional dimension of a space - if humans are part of its function.

Functionalism in architecture is however quite recent in history. Much older architectural structures were made for societal status symbols (some still are) for religious manifestations of the nearness of Gods or purely for esthetic reasons. "Form follow function" is the main message of functionalism in architecture and it is less than hundred years old. It must be for the photography to identify the "function" of an architectural structure and from there decide the elements to include.

Su's photo I appreciated mainly as an abstract more than an architectural photo, despite the title : "Opera House" which surely announce the function of the space, but still the space has its own non-functional quality and beauty which deserve to be underlined.

Beautifully written, David. Very instructive. Thanks.

Supriyo, my comment was a general comment to a question of Michael.

Concerning the person on the scene of the POW, I simple think the photo could be without, and still be an elegant shot.I don't think, like you that it would be a completely different photo without the person. In my eyes the square and the scene function as a focal point all by itself.

MIchael my remark on the "person", was meant as a critic.
For my eye, this photo can fully stand alone without human presence and is even better without.
I have the impression, that the standard human element in photography, is a type of professional tic. We can't do without, even in cases where the figure doesn't add to the general "message of the image. Some viewers might probably only look at the image because of the person. A marketing trick !

Very elegant, all in circles and curves only contrasted with the square on the scene and vertical lines in the centre.
As so often with this type of graphic language, the person is only there to attract attention.

It seems that my comment above ended up fairly broken - send from my Ipad in a moving international fast-train !
Here it is in a somewhat more readable version:

The broken fork is for me in line with the symbolic language of the image ,together with the falling fence and the cloth left hanging. I'm convinced, that the man is off too, limping.

The broken fork is for me in line with the symbolic language of the image ,together with the tha falling fence and the o left hanging. I'm convinced, that the man is off too...

Perfection :)

However:
All elements in the composition are supporting the scene, making it very predictable. I'm missing just a slight indicium (misstep) in the frame, that can make me become convinced that, this is real life.

To paraphrasing Oscar Wilde: The very essence of art is its unpredictability.

You are right, Julie, the cross is there. I think I need to broaden my cropping in order to include it.
I like very much your reference to poetry and and words with slants. Chinese poetry is almost only made by words with slants because of the calligraphic images. Good image, if I my say so.

Not really like Julie. After all, I only looked at it once and immediately caught the movement and the flying board. The scene is there, but unfortunately not supported by the composition, which is build up as if the fire was the subject to portrait.For me, an image that is in desperate need of being cropped (Square format with the boy placed two third to the left in the frame, for example).
I have not reflection on boyhood, adulthood, thug or something else. Just a boy doing what all boys always have been doing in front of a bonfire.

"Maybe, as so often is the case, the way each one us sees an image like this week's POW, tells more about ourselves than of some objective fact about the image"
I didn't write that formulation as any critic of anyone who has expressed their views on this week's POW. The proof might be that it, without doubts, includes me too.
I find find indeed interesting, amusing, instructive that any one photo is interpreted and experienced so very much differently. Probably not because one viewer and critic is so much more skilled in writing about photos, than anyone else, but maybe, to come back to the photo, because some photos due of their subject, composition, colour treatment etc, invites for multiple interpretations.
If it is the case, I find it arresting to try to point at the aspects of a photo, which provide such openings to multiple experiences when viewing them. But, again whether a photo forces on the viewer some kind of monolithic message, restricting viewers interpretations, or, on the contrary, as the POW maybe, provides visual experiences in many directions, might be getting nearer to a analysis of photo and its qualities.

Maybe, as so often is the case, the way each one us sees an image like this weeks POW, tells more about ourselves than of some objective fact about the image. We all project our very being into the image.

Personally, I see no death and doom in this hand and the cane. I see a hand of old age and senescence, settledness, fulfillment. It makes me comfortable and venerative. All good and positive feelings - far from death and doom. Putting that hand on the top of a walking stick, symbol of authority and social prestige, as well as of traveling and moving into the surrounding world, provides tension and interconnections between the two items.

That the photographer has used his skills mimicking a renaissance still-life image, adds to the quality of the scene. Still-life paintings confront "dead items" (nature-morte) of different colors, textures together with different artifacts such as plates, tinware, pottery etc. - and sometimes a skull. Here, in this POW, we see a cane and a very "nature-vivante" human hand.

David, I'm with when you refer to the stories our hands tel, but I find one of the most interesting aspects of this image is, that it uses all the technics and aesthetics we are acquainted to from still-life paintings and yet the hand is very human and alive.

Two points: The back of the thumb is shown and therfore no nail, naturally.
As concerns the cutting of the lower part of the walking stick, it is a choice that I approve of because the picture becomes a vignette, and not just a picture of a hand on a walking stick.

A beautiful shot. One of the best I have seen on PN since some time. It is "simple" composition concentrating on the two items of interest. No travelling of the eyes is needed or invited for. One catches the aesthetics and beauty of the aged human hand and the artifact, the stick handle, as one united subject. Love it !
I will immediately go and visit Mete's portfolio. Congratulations with the POW.

I will leave this for others to discuss.
For me, it is an illustration to, what in French is called, a photo-roman.

Both Fred and Arthur seem to be right:The blur on the pier was (not "is") two runners with green shorts" - and blurred by "excessive use of a saturation slider in post", and probably by other means to.
I have do not have the foggiest notion of what a "Luther Burger" is - but I feel fine. I"m sure it is not eatable.

I agree with anything that has been said up till now, and see no need to repeat it.
What caught my eye immediately, because the scene has been seen numerous times and cannot anymore catch my attention, was the strange brown blur on the pier, which Leslie sees as a ghost. I would rather see it as a PS technical hick-up and should be reason enough not to mix it with keepers.
A shame because others of Ricardas photos in his portfolio are more interesting.

Thanks Maria, very appreciated.

It is just an installation in the Turbine Hall by Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno with the obscure title of "Anywhen is Another Day with Another Sun", 2014, as seen by a photographer that passed by :)

Thanks Jack.

Fine photo, which immediately grasp your attention with the anachronically looking gespenst standing in the opening of what seems to be curtains, confronted to the bright light of the banal modern building. The horizontal broad dark something, that cuts the scene, looks like a second thought of the scenarist changing his mind on the very existence of what we see. The long, long surrealist shadows of the legs come nearest to the reality of the scene. It never happened.
Cowboy, I see not, midnight, neither. Prefer it without a title.

Reflection photos like this have surely been made before, but it is a good one among them, all in diagonal with square base.