samstevens

Very much depends on what you want out of the photo and the role accuracy plays for you. I notice the square crop adds an intriguing element of abstraction in the background. The lake and the background mountain are now less prominent but differently and ambiguously (in a good way, to me) expressive as they have become less of what they are in fact but perhaps more of what they can be when transformed by photography. I'm not necessarily advocating for either crop as much as recognizing the merits of the square crop. On another note, I think the complexity and strength of the foreground makes the photo. It's energetic, not relaxing, and does require some work, all of which I like in a photo.

I don't know about sharper, but it sure makes it look artifacty. Notice the blobs that have been introduced in the central gold column and on the lower left pink wall. Digital sharpening often comes at a price, one that shouldn't be quite this high.

the easy part the hard part

It looks correct and accurate.

While I think what you say about projects is very perceptive, I think you're being needlessly self deprecating about your own work. While you may be more "haphazard" in your overall shooting and may not put a lot of "thought" into each one, there's a consistency in your work which shows a very personal attachment to making photos. Your scenes are often haunting in some hard-to-describe way. The landscapes you shoot seem to me as much an inner scape as an outer one. That's not the case with a lot of landscapes. So, whether you think about the shots is not really point. Something in you, perhaps more deep than conscious thought, is leading your eye to where it goes and what pictures it makes of the world. Haphazardness is guided by something, even if it's not the conscious you.

I guess you’re right. You didn’t say your colors were the same as his, you just didn’t see a difference between snapping a guy’s tush at the beach and clumsily making the guy huge in the frame with no attention paid to the background, and Sweet’s more respectful, narrative, and connected photos. Got it. And still, you’re wrong that one would see his colors at the beach. One wouldn’t. One would only see them in pictures of the beach.

Accuracy is sometimes overrated. Xerox machines are pretty accurate. But you’re helping make my point. Jordan said several times he didn’t see any difference between his colors and Sweet’s. One of the things I was trying to do, as I think all of us are, is to help him see better. If a photographer can’t see that difference in color you’re describing, it’s a good place to start learning. Because everyone has to be an Avedon and only that kind of pathos is worthy! Not. I give Sweet credit for shooting Miami and Tampa differently and not sticking to a more searing black and white template to shoot everything in sight.

It’s about seeing the photos. It’s not about KNOWING or HAVING READ ABOUT his intent. It’s the intention the photos show. Your photo shows "vacation snap.' His series shows something else entirely. I think you're comparing surfaces, and not seeing beyond "beach," and "old people." My point exactly. There is a distinctive color palette which you're not seeing. Look again, carefully, at the color of the water and the sand on his home page shot, how much green there is in the water compared to your pic and most pics, how much the sand leans toward red. Color palette is just one element but it's a start in terms of seeing better. No, they're not. They're much more photographic and you wouldn't see them on a beach. What you'd see on a beach is closer to the generic color palette your photo uses. Again, that's what I'm trying to get across. Though I don't consider them that special, I'm able to step back from that and appreciate their consistency, intentional compositions and storytelling, his more personal and expressive approach to color, and his willingness to show in the pictures a connection to subjects and his success at providing a viewpoint that seems part of the scenes rather than merely curious about them or distanced from them. It's not all about our opinions and how special we think they are. He didn't. And he certainly didn't seem to be trying to, according to the emotional tone of the pictures. "Extraordinary" isn't always the goal. In this case, it seems like the opposite of the goal.

Neither did I. You posted your example as a comparison, not as art. Not seeing the difference between your photo and Sweet's series is what strikes me. It's not about the relative quality of each, which is a matter of opinion. You come back to "art," "opinion," and now "talent," all of which miss the point. That you don't see a difference (not a better/worse difference, but a difference in intention, color palette, energy, and narrative) is what I'm pointing out. That's not about art, talent, or opinion.

Your descriptions and your posted photo as comparison call into question what you’re able to see more than any opinions of art.

I agree that making the blown water a little bit gray doesn't reduce the problem. It tries to mask it but actually loses vibrancy in the process.

I imagine explorers and astronauts would get a good laugh at the idea that going to the moon once was the idea. Bringing it back to photography, I'm glad Imogen Cunningham's calla lily didn't stop Tina Modotti and Robert Mapplethorpe from making their own. Like I said, it's not always first that counts, and I don't think it was about improving on Cunningham's work or competing with it, it's about each photographer's personal take on a very photogenic subject.

Nobody wanted to watch the Titanic sink the first time. Watching a dog show, to me, would be like watching golf or paint dry. Anyway, originality is admirable, being the first in art or photography, but it’s not the whole enchilada. What Sweet did was by far not a first. It was personal, which is often more important than first.

lol. The photos weren't the purpose of the moon landing and, when it's done again, the purpose won't be the photos either. The photos were and will be a by-product of space exploration, which is worth doing again. Anyway, next time someone steps onto the moon, count me in to watch it.

It's a very good composition of a lovely scene. The undulating road feels at home and even organic for a road! The photo seems overexposed to me, so you have a big patch of water on the right that's blown and really tugging at the eye to a very unsubtle pitch, at odds with the rest of the loveliness of the photo. Same for some of the clouds. Since this was taken digitally, I'd go back to the color original and make sure there isn't some detail in the highlights that could be recovered or that got blown in the conversion. If not, next time for a scene like this, I'd expose more for the highlights and you'd be able to recover the shadowed areas. As is, the shadowed areas look good and read well, and had you exposed so that the water wasn't blown, I think you could bring the much darker areas to this same degree of exposure in post. I'm not one who's against blowing a highlight here and there, but in a shot like this it would have to be limited to very small areas. In a more edgy shot, say a contemporary or punkish urban night shot with strong lighting, blown highlights in larger areas can be expressive and appropriate. This is the kind of shot where I think technical photographic matters actually become part of the content of the photo and it's more visually appealing if they appear refined.

I think Supriyo made a nice assessment of the photo. My only disagreement is on the right foreground, which is my favorite part. That distortion, for me, adds to the sense of unreal Supriyo has found in the overall image. It's sort of like a threatening ooze on the otherwise calm of the scene. I actually like how it breaks the infinity of the water, considering it's an urban and not a nature landscape scene. I appreciate being jarred like that here. What the scene offers me as a viewer is the contrast of the lived and more organized buildings on the right to the warehouse and more commercial feel on the left. I think the big metallic doorways on the left have the potential to add a lot of texture and interest to the scene if handled with that in mind, especially as they contrast, one vertical and one horizontal. I think the car or truck at center stage has the potential to be brought out more and become an intriguing part of the scene, perhaps suggesting a bit of a storyline, something Supriyo was looking for and that I agree with him about. I'm not sure whether I'm making out heads of passengers or headrests, but there's enough potential detail there to give that vehicle more presence and a role in the picture.

That's not what I'm talking about. Sure, I may appreciate the effort that goes into getting up early and climbing a mountain in order to photograph from an outback high point, even if I don't like the photos. But I'm talking about actually appreciating what the photos themselves may have to offer despite my dislike for them. That was how I grew to really respect and learn from some Japanese photography that I didn't at first like. It wasn't that the effort put into them offered me anything, it was that people I respected told me to give that kind of photography a chance and a long, hard look. I began simply to analyze and try to decipher it just to see what others may have seen in it and it opened a lot of doors to me. It took time, effort, and a willingness not to be tied down by my own taste, but it paid off. We can all be somewhat easily dismissive in our initial reactions to photographs, especially since there are so many these days at our fingertips. I try to counter that with openness and willingness which often pay more dividends than my initial reaction. Sometimes, of course, I try and try and still don't like stuff.

Jordan, your response somewhere above mentioned that only one person liked the photos. I picked up on that because, as I have, one can look to see more in a series and at least attempt to flern what a photographer was doing even without liking the work. Appreciating work I don’t like has both broadened my understanding of things and helped me separate my taste out of some equations.

By the way, limiting the experience of art or photography to what one likes is unfortunate.

Jordan, you’ve brought up your own photos and those of others several times and posted one of yours from a beach, so I did think that was relevant. Anyway, I offered some of why I think Sweet is worth looking at, more than just color. It’s for you to decide if what I said about Sweet’s photos is of any value to you.

Yet, lo and behold, most people with cameras haven’t done that. Many 5-year-olds, according to their non-discerning parents, could create a Mark Rothko yet, once again, they haven’t. Hypotheticals are wonderful but often don’t bear fruit. One difference between you and Sweet is that he did it and you talk about that you could, perhaps, have done it. Importantly, you didn’t. Do you think yours would show “visual and conceptual continuity?” Maybe select a dozen and post them so we can decide together. In the meantime, I can just go with what I’ve got. Though I don’t love Sweet’s work, his color palette is expressive, he gets that there’s a narrative afoot, and shows that by placing subjects in context, often with some relationship to a story in the background as well. You grabbed a cute shot of an old man’s behind practically filling the frame. Your photo says to me you thought that was cute and you made no apparent connection with that man ... he’s an object for your camera ... or between that man and anything else in the camera’s view. The backgrounds in Sweet’s work are often subplots to the main subject. Your background could have easily been bokeh. The shot of Sweet’s that most stands out to me is of the orthodox man with beard in dark overcoat and hat on the right side of the pic showing a classic beach neighborhood. His garb is instantly recognizable within a cultural milieu, the scene is deftly (not unconsciously) skewed, and the man’s body language exudes energy and Just plain has a Jewish dance feel to it. That was captured. Not having more of your photos at the beach to go by, I wonder if you would have imbued a subject and scene like this with that kind of knowing character or if you would have just made the guy bigger and in the center of the frame because he caught your eye. Would you have shown him as a curiosity, which is the feeling I get from your beach bum, or would you have found that right moment of movement and gesture that provides such character to an individual?

The fact that I don't personally get much from Sweet's work doesn't prevent me from seeing the difference between a quick, one-off, random snap of what someone thought was an interesting subject and the considered and consistent series presented by Sweet. I grow really weary of the "my 12-year-old son could have done this" level of critique.

I recommend looking at Martin Parr’s beach photos in comparison to Sweet’s. Parr does a better job of capturing movement and relationships and creates more interesting compositions. For some, Parr’s use of flash and strong color schemes will be a bit much, but I find Parr’s work more intriguing and more of a cultural and far more of a photographic statement.

The sense of space and scale is what makes the photo for me. I wonder if the print itself shows the reeds in the foreground a little better. That's one that requires finesse and it's hard to tell from a screen image whether the reeds will read (sorry for that - lol) well or not. They are a nice textural addition, however. The centering of the sunrise itself with the couple to the left is a nice compositional choice. The color reflection in the water is soft and subtle, nicely done. There's a cool-warm thing going on with the land and sea on the one hand, the sky and reflections on the other, that has a nice energy. The couple is not in complete silhouette so their softness and aliveness adds that touch of humanity rather than simply the iconic or symbolic feel of a silhouette. The almost rigidly straight horizon line accentuates the more sensuous curve of the shoreline.