vuk_vuksanovic

bernhard.

 

as you know, i'm of the opinion that cropping should be added to the list of mortal sins. had you been able to capture this full frame, well then we'd have something excellent on our hands. as such--and considering the film pushing + lighting situation--there is an mucky quality to the whole thing which your "blow up" produces/exaggerates. grain can be cool in B&W, but it is rarely a nice thing with colour.

 

btw--someone berated me the other day for having given out ratings that averaged to a cruel 4.87 for originality and 4.61 for aesthetics. considering that 4 is the mid-point, you'd figure i was being generous by averaging out to above average. anyhow, those ratings were mostly from a along time ago and i obviously have no idea about the current ratings culture, apart from the fact that it appears the more things change... you know the saying.

 

cheers,

vuk.

there's simply too much light pouring in from the top left corner and creating an uncontrolled/excessive/dulling haze. twice in three weeks, the elves have chosen pictures with light source coming in toward the lens: it's very difficult to pull off and, although this is better than the first, the effort still falls short.

 

i have a feeling that, if the photgrapher tried a few things apart from the missionary position in setting up his camera angle, we could be looking at something considerably more accomplished.

 

vuk.

in terms of discussion, this is a complete farce compared to what we had a few years ago. it's almost as if respondents were hand-selected by photonet police.

 

vuk.

peeps, please do not alter (crop, edit, unsaturate, etc.) the man's photo. that is incredibly vulgar. if you feel so compelled, by all means go out and shoot your own that you think is better.

this is certainly an excellent composition and technically executed to perfection, but somehow an uncomforatble feeling of vicarious shivering ultimately over-rides everything else; well, at least for me. in simple terms: the skinny little man looks cold! there is also perhaps the lack of just a tiny touch of irony that would set everything free. very well done, but still a near miss--albeit by the narrowest of margins.

 

vuk.

jean-baptiste.

 

if you worried a bit less about silly/uninformative/cheerleader ratings* and considered the sort of constructive criticism i have offered, you could possibly end up with better technique and/or a properly tuned monitor.

 

*please note that virtually all of the ratings i made here were from several years ago and photonet has since changed the scales twice (as far as i know), rendering my "averages" rather meaningless. i can forgive your ignorance of this fact/history, but it still doesn't excuse your childish reply to my posting.

 

vuk.

the finished product is essentially washed out--this may be a function of (1)the photographer having his monitor incorrectly calibrated, (2) an ill-advised artistic decision or (3) a restrictive exposure error. i fully understand that it's very much a bold move to have the light source coming torward the lens *in any way*, but one has to be in top form through every step of the process to pull it off. as things stand, the photgrapher has not fully succeeded, though i am fairly sure he could have.

 

vuk.

Rienk.

 

You keep wasting your breath (fingertips), but I applaud you for it. In the 1940s, Wilhelm Furtwängler reacted to the super sharp/crisp conducting and orchestral playing in the USA by creating a sloppy and diffuse sound that was enormous, powerful, expressive and sublime. He is now considered by many the greatest conductor of all time, but I suspect if a "photographer equivalent" posted something here it would be immediately deleted. Oh sh*t, I've probably just given them the cue again just by mentioning deletions...

 

William.

 

Although you've shot an outstanding picture, the scan is inexcusably shoddy. You could at least have straightened out the crooked carrier placement (easy enough in photoshop) and spotted the dust on your transparency (admittedly tedious by any means).

 

Cheers,

Vuk.

Marc.

 

I am not opposed to the guy on the left being in the frame per se. What I find annoying is that he's not in focus (especially considering the amount of space he takes up AND that he's in the foreground).

The smaller the posted picture, the more i like it--mainly (I think) because it makes the out-of-focus guy seem less so. I wonder if a Leica could have made this all more convincing ;-)

I examined the picture without first reading anything about it and I must confess that nothing about a war came to mind for me either. Not that it matters, but there are other concerns. From a formal/compositional perspective, a big blurry object in the foreground is not something easy to make work and I find it detracting here. A step in and to the right, with vertical positioning of the camera may have improved the composition considerably. The "punchline" here is the patient with bulging eyes, but as things stand, it just takes too long to find him and, when you do, he's not taking up enough of the canvas or figuring in it centrally enough, especially considering the prominent and distracting role of our out-of-focus smiling-eye man.

Yes, "bright and jarring" background--it makes the photo unpleasant to look at for any sort of extended period.

The photo is very clever and definitely adds that extra dimension required to raise insect macros above the banal. Nonetheless, something just doesn't work here in terms of the final punch. I'll go out on a limb and suggest the bokeh is rather pedestrian and that the side is consequently let down by the rather large out-of-focus area.

Rainer.

 

Congratulations once again! I learned quite a bit a couple of years ago by looking at your work.

Very nice picture, but it would have been much better had you moved over to the left a step or two--partly to place the girl further toward the right edge of the frame and give us a little more of the receding lines/perspective on the left.

Come on Vuk, care to explain?"-- Geraldine Allen

 

It's all been explained to Tony and I leave it in his hands to disclose in public what he feels comfortable with.

 

BTW--shouldn't you be in bed young lady?

Don't worry Marc. I purchased a print of this over a year ago and it will soon be displayed in the most prestigious photographic gallery in the world.

 

Hello Geraldine! How are you, my darling? I did indeed survive the darkroom poisoning but have had to endure lengthy rehabilitation.

Just over a decade ago now, I tried explaining to my trendy, artsy friends how Flavor Flav* made one of the most influential gestures in 20th century fashion by hanging those huge clocks around his neck. They all laughed at the time, but just look in the streets today at the oversized pants, flashy running shoes, silly hats and supersized jewelry and you'll see who's had the last laugh. This picture is the photographic equivalent of that bold artistic statement by Mr. Flav. I will now have to completely rethink my whole approach to shooting in order to keep up.

 

Vuk.

 

*of the band Public Enemy--sorry for pointing out the obvious, but it's for the sake of certain totally unhip Photonetters and those living in extremely remote/isolated places like Australia

Tony.

Excellent critique.

The idea here is excellent and the photographer was merely seconds and feet away from a masterpiece. Unfortunately, it looks like the frame that's one or two ahead of the shot which really counted. Actually, in the case of most of us (myself included), it's perhaps more aptly described as the best we managed to do in a state of panic. Cruel but true. The only missed goal in history worth celebrating is Pelé's effort (from his own half !!!!!) to lob the Czech goal-keeper in 1970. It's a bloody high standard, but enough people have met it shooting street pics that there can be no excuses for intrusive horizontals, poor framing, distracting shapes behind the principal subject and less-than-imaginative perspective.BTW--I really like the photographer's picture of the three boys on the beach.

This is certainly the best surfing action photo I have ever seen. You say you used a 15mm lens--this would have put you within a few feet of the surfer. Could you provide more details about it?

This is definitely a slick photo and one that I'd certainly not toss in the "reject" pile. In fact, it almost manages to transcend the sterile and vapid imagery of most water-drop shots, but such an accomplishment would have placed Ilona right up there with Helmut Newton and HCB.

 

What's wrong with it? First of all, the photographer is obviously aiming at art, but the final result is the sort of throw-away image you'll find in a kitchenware shop at your local suburban mall, either as a decorative ad poster or on the cardboard tag hanging from a $150 stainless steel pot. In this sense, the picture is actually a "success" and if that sort of thing was the aim, I'll gladly revise a portion of my opinion. As it stands, I accuse the photographer, elf and most raters of being too easily impressed by all that glitters.

 

The second problem has to do with a mastery of equipment and photographic technique. Why is this picture square? Was it shot through a Hasselblad or Kiev 66? While I can forgive a bit of trimming here and there, chopping off a third of what one has framed initially is rather sloppy work. In much the same vein, has the photographer chosen the best medium on which to execute this capture? The digital camera, with it's over-sharpened emphasis on that which is blunt, fails completely in rendering the sort of nuance that could possibly elevate this picture beyond the frigidity implicit in the subject. Also, why make it black and white? Does that seem quaint for a digital capture? Why not a bit of Sepia toning? Why not actually shoot it on a proper B&W film and get some interesting tonality, texture and atmosphere out of the subject?

 

Finally, the so-called "sunstar" is the icing on a cake of kitsch. Like a cheesy smile on child beside a bubble-gum machine in a department-store portrait studio, or the glitter in the eye of a teary bridesmaid, the effect is as sincere/convincing as the sort of cheap Photoshop effect suggested in a prior posting.

 

Before signing off, I should perhaps note that, just the other day, someone on the Leica forum accused me of making "eye-candy" pictures. With that in mind, you can either dismiss my criticisms entirely or take them as the insightful expert testimony of a master criminal. If you feel I'm being rather hard on the photographer, please consider that it's with the aim of pushing her to the greater heights I suspect she's capable of. The uncomfortable--yet necessary--part of such an ambition involves dismissing most Photonet opinion as rubbish.

Outsanding photograph! Please take my advice and shoot this stuff with a real (film) camera.

Doug.

 

I agree wholeheartedly with the suggestions you've "depicted." In fact, you've actually brought the picture to standard I would hold for PoW.

Thomas.

 

Most shots from behind seem to say more about the timidity of the photographer than the scene itself, but here you've successfully broken the rule. Congratulations. The interplay between country fence and off-the-shelf evening-wear (so off-the-shelf, it was probably sewn by "mom") is brilliant and a great bit of fin-de-siecle documentary. If only you'd shot it on proper B&W film I would have paid a rather hefty price for a conventional darkroom print.

...but HCB didn't use a telephoto lens.-- Tony Dummett

 

...and he didn't crop the hell out of his neg to get a decent image.