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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/23/2001 8:45:18 PM
Another experimenter! Good.
What draws my attention in
this composition is the red thingy and the braclet - both
relatively sharp smallish objects compared to the rest of
the image - but it isn't quite enough to hold my interest
for long perhaps because of all the other weirdness in the
image. It's almost too many experiments for my old
conservative mind to handle at once.
Good seeing and concept -- there is a lot of wonder in the
everyday objects.
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| Photo By: Andrea Besch
(K:52)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/23/2001 8:09:44 PM
Effective. For me this is an image that works as well
upside down as rightside up.
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| Photo By: Martin Mora
(K:4666)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/23/2001 8:01:10 PM
If I could make portraits like this, I'd quit my day job.
Not only is the image technically perfect - but the
choice backdrop, lighting etc - an impressively simple
appearance - although we all know how difficult
that is to achieve.
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| Photo By: Samuel C. Ormes
(K:0)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 6:11:38 PM
Alex - we agree - so I must have expressed myself poorly -
the image doesn't work because of poor lighting. This
moment would have been great if it was well lit. It would
have also been great even with poor lighting if it had
documented an event significant enough to the audience that
we'd forgive the poor lighting. I don't know what that
event might be -- perhaps newspaper headline material -
or (if we want to sink so low) gossip material. The
question tried to ask was "Is this moment so signifcant
to the two people here that they would accept the poor
lighting?"
What I was trying to say is that in documenting/
capturing instants in time, there is usually a tradeoff
between the technical details and event itself - the PJ's
dilemma. As you point out, there are things we can do to
get prepared -- but some of the things we can't control.
Alex and I agree that we are both fans. Keep posting.
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| Photo By: Greg Pauline
(K:27)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 1:35:11 PM
Mora - thanks for posting this one. It reminds me of
some of the the highly stylized early portrait paintings,
you know the ones with the careful studies of light.
I am having a hard time estimating the age of the subject
here for some reason - keeps flipping back and forth
between young child and somewhat older. Any hints?
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| Photo By: Martin Mora
(K:4666)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 1:27:55 PM
Welcome Maria.
I particularly like the eye contact
the trumpet player has with the camera.
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| Photo By: Maria Garripoli
(K:0)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 1:23:59 PM
Jeremy - you live in a nice place -- except in the winter.
When this image popped up, I thought wow - someone is
working on a spoof of all those product/model shots --
you know the ones where the model so obviously does use
the product being shown. Like the position of the hands,
the nails! and the slightly tilted camera. Its a concept
worth exploring -- maybe on your next shoot you could add
a frame or two to the end of the roll.
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| Photo By: Jeremy Hood
(K:153)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 1:11:14 PM
Greg, it's hard isn't it to select the right spot such
that the light is good, to get everything focused up, and
capture the moment. But what happens if you are in
a position to document an event, but there is
no way the image will be great. How good does the
document have to be to override the shortcomings of
the image?
For me, a stranger that knows nothing about the two
subjects, this is just a generic event -- so the
problems Gary mentioned swamp whatever emotional impact
is going on. Did your friends feel differently though?
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| Photo By: Greg Pauline
(K:27)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 1:01:00 PM
Another watercolor like image Tony... but I like the one
of the sunflower better. The foreground vegatable
has a nice subtle green color - reminding me of the
toned and hand painted photo (this one isn't is it?)
To me, the foreground object just doesn't have as much
ooomph as the sunflower - perhaps too subtle for my
underdeveloped image pallete.
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Photo By: Tony Smallman
(K:23858)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/22/2001 12:56:14 PM
It reminds me a bit of a painting - has the
supersaturated colors, sort of a soft focus
over most of the image and a slight posterization
appearance.
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| Photo By: Tony Smallman
(K:23858)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/20/2001 2:33:46 PM
A page stopper. If I were flipping through an old magazine
trying to catch up/find and article etc, this one would
make me pause and check out the image -- even if it were
used in an ad for a product I'm uninterested in. This
photo has impact.
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| Photo By: Phillip Cohen
(K:10561)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/19/2001 7:33:06 PM
Nathan - I looked at this for a long time (so that is
successful) trying to figure out the perspective. I
guess it is the lack of reference ground or background.
The distance keeps collapsing on me and I end up seeing
three glasses of slightly different sizes) floating side
by side. It makes a neat study of perspective.
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| Photo By: nathan combs
(K:2242)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/19/2001 12:11:29 PM
What Artie said... This shot has great po. (potential) and
needs additional exploration. When I first saw the shot,
I wondered if it needed some deeper blacks in the shadows -
there is certainly another few steps on the gray scale.
However, upon staring some more at the photo, I find the
reduced range gives a certain soft feel to the image that
might be lost if reproduced full range. Nice use of grain
and tone here. I noticed right off that the limited DOF
and focus on the baby's hand. I'm wondering what sort of
feel you'd get with both hands in sharp focus -- would this
bring up the difference between the textures in the two
hands you mentioned?
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| Photo By: Chuck Greene
(K:0)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/18/2001 3:31:52 PM
Chris - so post it anyway. One of the things I enjoy
is looking at the details in the differences of various
executions. One of the things that is begining to be
beat into my brain is that we have to get all (or most)
of the details right for the details not to matter to
the viewer critic. I think that's good -- now if I can
just remember where the shutter button is while keeping
all this in mind....
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/18/2001 2:53:47 PM
Debbie -- great idea! And it gives me a bunch of other
ideas as well. Stay tuned. Turnaround time right now
is about a week -- one hour lab my eye...
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/14/2001 9:32:23 PM
Positioning the model was easy: 'Dear, move your hand a
little more to the left. Please don't let all the goo run
out.' It helps to have a spouse that likes to cook (this
is one way foodies separate the whites from the yolk -
with impeccably clean hands of course). Getting the photo properly
lit and exposed was another thing. I went ahead and posted
the best of the roll -- even though it doesn't have zing the
concept did. What I wanted was something less yucky and
more foodie. Any suggestions?
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/14/2001 12:22:29 PM
Debbie -
Really a nice image - almost surreal. I've never thought about using a scanner
directly. Wonder if you could actually use auxillary lighting as well? Also wonder
if some of the sliced fruit photos shown recently would be rendered equally as
wonderful directly on a scanner - but with additional back lighting.
Good thinking.
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| Photo By: Debbie Groff
(K:9569)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/11/2001 11:10:17 PM
To everyone - didn't ruffle any of my feathers - and actually I think the
discussion although long winded was useful. It does point out that we
may need to have a comment block that mentions the post processing.
After all, we record (sometimes) the film that we use, the aperature,
the shutter speed and the lens. At least in this case, the post processing
that was done is at least as important as the camera details.
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/10/2001 10:20:02 PM
The defense rests.
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/10/2001 6:58:35 PM
On why it was edited --
Without editing the background was pretty sharp and I thought it was
too distracting. I decided that with the sharp background
it was a mediocre photo and that if I had shot it wide open, it might have
been a good photo. It seemed worth checking out (to see if a DOF control
could have made the difference). If one were sufficiently
skilled in photoshop, it seems like the DOF effect should be able to be
approximated -- obviously I didn't completely succeed -- this time.
I may even try some A/B tests (real DOF vs simulated
DOF) and see what it takes.
As Vlad says, its better to get it perfectly on film the first time -- saves
lots of time in the darkroom or on the computer. And it also eliminates
the possibility of messing up on the post processing or producing an
image that couldn't really exist. But once the event is over if the record
is worthy, we may have to fix the existing problems -- maybe minor
dust spotting - maybe something more major.
Anyway, that was what was going through my mind. It is on the push
line for edits that I am comfortable with -- but it verified my initial thought
that with a shallow DOF, it could have been good. If you are still interested
in the unedited photo I can post it.
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/9/2001 7:36:19 PM
I can understand the problem of not being able to fit it
all into a frame. Have you considered shooting multiple
frames and trying to stitch them together?
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| Photo By: Andy Whitney
(K:45)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/9/2001 7:23:55 PM
Mike-
have you considered correcting the 'lean' in photoshop
using the perspective transform?
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| Photo By: Mike Allebach
(K:391)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/9/2001 5:28:08 PM
If it is impossible to get the whole
building in the shot, keep the camera level, and avoid
buying another lens or renting a helicopter, you might
consider doing the perspective correction in photoshop.
It is another skill - and it doesn't work so well if you
have overlapping foreground and background objects.
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| Photo By: Greg Pauline
(K:27)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/9/2001 4:18:00 PM
Larry -
Actually no, you can comment on the composition. What I
meant to say is that this isn't entirely grab -- I did
get my chance to choose a position.
But as far as the background -- I'm busted! The DOF is
as you say the result of editing -- which is a philosophical
point that no doubt will receive some debate. My philosophy
(at the current time) is that one strives to set up
the shots so that they are perfect without cropping,
burning, or more advanced editing. Sort of a test of
skill but also because viewers have traditionally expected
photographs to represent an instant in time and space that
was actually experienced by the photographer. However, once
the film is exposed, one sometimes (as I did) tries to
modify the photo to be more expressive - or to correct
technical problems (in this case shooting with a stopped
down lens). I ran a blurr filter over the background to
get rid of a lot of distraction feeling as I did so like
someone setting up a magazine ad rather than a photographer.
I think it worked -- but next time it will be done with the
lens.
Incidently -- that was a good work spotting the processing.
-- chris
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/9/2001 12:53:58 AM
See shot #3079 for a wider view. Not sure what I should
have done here -- perhaps waited a fraction of a second
longer for the man on the end to come fully into view.
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/9/2001 12:50:42 AM
I like it. Nice merge (I know how hard this can be).
It's hard to display these long panoramas in this forum.
Have you considered adding a link to a full sized image?
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| Photo By: Pierre Slabber
(K:0)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/8/2001 9:42:45 PM
I like this photo! Personally I think it looks even more like a 'don't mess with me' poster
when it is cropped so the beak is dead center in a square frame, although you do loose
some of the details of the animal if that is done. Nice work.
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| Photo By: Jon Adams
(K:8)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/8/2001 12:08:00 AM
Maggie -
There is another roll (Kodachrome) that is being rescanned. The slides look pretty good but
they did a terrible job maintaining the highlights on the scan. The eggs all washed out.
They will look over the slides and invent a story on Monday. We'll see how it goes.
I'll probably back off of this as a full time project, but continue to shoot an egg or two at the
end of the next couple of rolls. I need to let this sit on the back burner for awhile. I've been
looking around at other egg photos (eg http://church.tristesse.com/albums/albgraph/boxofbirds/eggs .jpg)
to see how other people handle the subject.
I'll be looking forward to your submissions.
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/7/2001 11:53:14 PM
Artie-
Looks better than the #2962 photo. I admit that the earlier photo had the wall in it because
I liked the hinges. I find that editing my own photos is sometimes like editing writing... you
have to watch out to not fall in love with a key phrase and it helps if they sit in a desk and
age for awhile. IE it does look better without the wall.
Most of the self-portraits I've tried have been blind hand-held shots (as was this). It took some
work in photoshop to correct the rotations.
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| Photo By: Chris Hayward
(K:1519)
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Critique By:
Chris Hayward (K:1519)
7/7/2001 8:01:07 PM
When I looked through the thumbnails, this one really jumped out at me. I think it
has to do with the strong yellow-blue contrast and the strong lines. Good shot.
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| Photo By: Bill Lange
(K:8)
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