Norma Desmond

You rascal! :cool:

To me, it’s more than just visible and readable. If I ran across the shot, I might very well assume it to be an ad for Biozell. Her body and the sign seem to be in perfect coordination, working together, especially connected by both color and composition. The sign is perfectly registered to the edge of the frame, so the sign itself becomes very intentional. They are also fairly equally lit. To me, the dominant feature separating the subject from background is the fact that the background is a big window framing the out of doors, which is both a physical separation in the content of the photo and an emotional separation in terms of indoor/outdoor. This doesn’t surprise me. But I don’t necessarily think it’s because DOF is always the best choice in determine the relationship of foreground to background. Of course, I don’t have clients to please, so I have the luxury of doing more of what I want. I think people often respond to narrow DOF because it can be a fairly obvious and stylized look. Consumers respond to those things. Blurs look impressive. Honestly, I think they can be very effective at times but I generally tend to find other ways to separate my backrounds through perspective, using compositional elements when I can, trying to work with existing natural light so it creates a natural highlighting of the subject, and other means. I also find myself wanting to INTEGRATE backgrounds more than many do. I like that sense of how a subject often seems to be intimately related to the background and don’t generally see the world or photos as a matter of primary subject against subordinate clause, but rather as a story in which background can provide interesting ideas and harmonies and counterpoints. So, I wouldn’t necessarily have approached the pic of the woman singer feeling thrust toward separating her by DOF more than she was already separated from the background. She and her dress have a lightness about her and could take on an almost floral presence by feeling just a little more part of that background, to which she is already connected by light and narrative. I’m not saying my way would be better. Just throwing out an alternative to the use of DOF, which I do think can become a default to the exclusion of other ways to see scenes photographically.

Sandy, you've now lost your sense of humor if not your entire mind, and you're dragging a sycophant down with you. It was a joke! I didn't even bring it up. If you want to blame anyone for bringing up Der Leader, please blame Denny, who had already made A JOKE and it simply made me smile because I thought he added a syllable and wasn't sure if it was an oversight or intentional just to make it sound a little funnier. If you're this insecure about the leader of your cult, not to mention the free world, maybe you should think about finding a different cult you could be more secure with. I've read enough news stories in both conservative and progressive blogs and websites to know that "Trumpian" is how we quite commonly turn Trump's name into an adjective, not Trumponian, as Denny wrote it. Never heard anyone talk about someone lying and referring to it as Nixonian? Or talking about trying to obfuscate with word play and calling it Clintonian? Turning names into adjectives is an equal opportunity employer. Believe me, it wasn't a political slur. It's really as simple as that. It seems you've become what you loathe, the political correctness police. Careful!

I hope that doesn't surprise you.

You had me going there for a minute! :p

I think there are probably several different kinds of interaction, and all of them can make something more complex. Let's talk about two kinds of interaction. I'm not sure of the words I'd use, but I'll try this: You seem to be limiting complexity to an almost chemical kind of interaction. You add hydrogen to oxygen in certain parts and you get water. You add a blue light to a red and come up with a third color. Or you add a fluorescent light to an incandescent light and your light gets cooler in temperature. We can call that a kind of chemical or organic interaction. I also think complexity can be added, as in the case of the tuba and piccolo (poor little piccolo), by what I'll call relational interactivity. Literally, you're right, adding the tuba might drown out the piccolo but doesn't change the actual sound of it. [i tried to do a cursory search but wasn't coming up with much on whether or not the tuba's sound waves can literally change the sound waves of the piccolo, which would be more the chemical or organic reaction above. But, let's say it doesn't.] To me, the change in perception of the sound of the piccolo when the tuba is added can be huge. If the two are playing simultaneously, the notes of each TOGETHER will cause either a harmonic or more dissonant sound. Harmony will have been introduced which wasn't there with the piccolo alone, and there's your interaction that I don't think can really be ignored when talking about complexity in sound or music. I'm not sure I could safely say the sound of a piccolo doesn't change to my ear when it's heard along with a tuba vs. when it's heard along with a violin vs. when it's heard in isolation. On one level, the piccolo is making the "same" sound, but the relation, to me, becomes a third element and that adds complexity. And, whether the actual sound changes, I think my perception of the sound of the piccolo does not remain the same when heard against a tuba or violin. If we're talking about lighting complexity, and we note that added light on a second subject affects the ambient light, or if we're talking about the difference between lighting a subject with a fairly simple setup against a black background vs. lighting a subject with a fairly simple setup against a more multi-dimensional background where the added background lighting can create degrees of depth and shadows on which the subject's shadows can now be cast, I just don't see how we wouldn't want to call that more complex lighting.

s/b "Trumpian"

Norman, I think it would be helpful if you said what you mean by complex. You may have an idiosyncratic idea of what it is, or at least one I'm not familiar with. You mention "additive properties of light" (and I'm not quite sure what you mean by that either) but, to me, adding more lights, in itself, is making the lighting setup more complex. 2+2+2=6 is more complex than 2+2=4. I don't believe this is true. If you have a red spot on someone, and add a blue spot, unless I'm mistaken, you will certainly change the existing light. Not the source of the light, of course, but certainly the light as reflected on the subject it's lighting.

Sensible can be overrated. Photography sometimes demands irrationality!

Okie dokie.

I guess it depends what the meaning of “complex” is. By your definition, writing a symphony is no more complex than writing for a solo instrument, but it is. What’s a complex compared to a simple sentence? It’s a sentence containing a subordinate clause. A . . . simple . . . definition of “complex”: consisting of many different and connected parts. When you light more subjects in a scene, or include more than one instrument in your musical compositions, your are having to deal with INTERACTIONS. It’s not just that another subject is simply lit. It’s that the lighting of the other subject changes the ambient and reflective lighting for the first subject as well as for the background, and so on. Furthermore, even with one subject, lighting can be more or less complex, for example, if you include lights in the shot that are props, lamps or car headlights, for which the lights lighting your subject will have to be rearranged and adjusted to accommodate. Or, if you want a particular pattern of shadows to fall across an individual’s body and face, sometimes different quality of shadow for different contours and surfaces of the face and body, your lighting setup may get more and more complex. Also just thinking out loud. I don’t hold myself out as an expert on lighting.

Likewise, it shouldn’t be that difficult for top-notch programmers to write some code allowing for an account to be deleted, while maintaining forum posts. More importantly, though, when was it you quit and deleted your portfolio? The reason I ask is I’ve read countless posts since the launch of PN2.0 saying how people have spent a while deleting photos only to discover the next day that they were back or couldn’t even save the deletions to begin with. At some point, I seem to remember the reappearing deletions issue was being put on the “to do” list. I don’t know if it’s been “to done” yet.

Yes. How to Create Photographs with Complex Lighting Scenarios on a Budget A subject will often be lit in a complex manner, and it will get even more complex when there’s a secondary subject and one wants to create mood, atmosphere, and/or style in the environment and background.

Philip, I figured that might be the case with you. Others have been experiencing it since the inception of PN2.0 a year and a half ago, and the point’s been made over and over again in a number of threads. The response, “I’ll check it out” made me wonder if this is the first its being checked out and if tech support had been made aware of this problem before.

Les, the system is a bit wonky today. I haven't been locked out of posting by the dreaded error message that tells me I have to wait 192 seconds before posting again (which goes on for a lot more than 192 seconds, of course) in several months. Today, it happened. Just Hopefully, just PN reminding us it's PN.

HERE'S A LINK to CNNs "famous iconic photos" Most of them tell a more complete story than Moore's photo. Some don't. Looking through them, I don't think Moore's will wind up in the lexicon of great iconic photos, though I do think it is providing an important illustration of today's administrative policy. Migrant Mother has long been a favorite iconic photo of mine. But the story it tells is of a mother and children. The photo itself doesn't say migrant and doesn't say depression era. We've grown up knowing what that photo is about, the story is embedded in it but is mostly from outside the frame. Eisenstadt's The Kiss, another amazing iconic photo, doesn't actually tell us it was the end of WWII. We know that because of outside info. The Sandy Hook photo shows children in horror but not the cause of it. We have to learn that from outside sources. I'm not taking away anything from any of these photos. I'm merely noting that great photos and great iconic photos don't do all the talking by themselves and don't necessarily tell the whole story or even the vital parts of the story. They often rely on our knowing the story to get the full impact of what they're showing. The three photos I mention stand on their own as moving photos, for a variety of reasons. But they don't necessarily clue us in to the significance of the stories they're part of unless we know, from the outside, what those stories are and know to connect them to the particular stories, which they don't do on their own.

It also happens with many people's screen names when they try to change them. I'm just curious. This has been an issue for a year and a half, since the redesign of PN. Is this the first you're hearing of it?

There are too many journalistic photos involved with political matters for a photo site to ignore. Any photo site that wouldn't recognize the importance of political photos and the long history of photography and politics, including the heated discussions that would ensue because of all sorts of passionate responses to the photos and the issues they address, wouldn't be very much of a photo site at all. If you don't want to take part, please don't. There's no reason you should. But there's also no reason a photo site you frequent shouldn't allow a free flow of ideas, no matter how contentious, on all matters that photos may be communicating about.

You still haven't answered why it's morally acceptable to want to deny a woman's right to choose (supposedly in order to save babies) and then unnecessarily take away those same babies you might have "saved" from their moms on the basis of lies about a law that doesn't exist while listening to their cries with no compassion but instead blaming someone else for what you're doing. Until you can do that, you're wasting any more attacks on Obama, who hasn't been president for about 18 months. I suspect you bring up Obama because you know there's no rational defense of what Trump is doing and you've run out of talking points and can't actually articulate a rational basis for the hypocrisy you're mired in.

By the way, I mentioned Nixon's questioning of the validity of the Ut photo at the time and said I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens now. Ann Coulter must have heard me. In referring to the audio recording at the migrant children internment camps, Coulter says . . . In the era of Trump, no facts, no truths, no pictures, and no recordings are safe.

I notice you didn't answer for the hypocrisy. I'm not pretending to know anything more about you than what you've said here. You have simultaneously referred to abortion as baby-killing (managed to get that cheap shot in even though it's a discussion of border policy) and talked in support of a policy that unnecessarily takes babies from their mothers. Instead of telling us how those two stances are morally rational, you call me sanctimonious. Good copout.

That's a good summation. Not a surprise. Yes, you're all for babies when they're in the womb and you can wield power over the women who are bearing them. And, then, in your infinite wisdom, you're perfectly willing to take them from their moms, put them in cages, and tell them it's someone else's fault you're doing this to them. Just your brand of holiness. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Republican Jennifer Rubin, of course termed a RINO, with another good summation [again, my emphasis added, just 'cuz it's a good turn of phrase]:

For Sandy: Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who has rarely broken with the White House, put out a statement today. [bold added for emphasis] Even Portman is willing to call it what it is. It looks like Sandy's is becoming an increasingly lone, isolated voice. That's a good thing.

Some pictures don't tell the story. They accompany it and, as I said earlier, punctuate it. Such photos often rely on the written story to provide the story itself and the photo adds visual expression. In that respect, it's neither as good nor complete a photo as the Ut photo, but it doesn't make it unimportant. Where Robin got the information about what the photo is about is from articles that the photo accompanies.

None of that stops any number of websites from allowing people to cancel or delete their accounts. Seems like a reasonable request.