I’m not sure I really like Rothko, or abstract painting in general. Though like you, I’m not sure I’ve seen much of any Rothko in the flesh. I think part of the experience may be scale. I guess I was thinking puncturing that grandeur with everyday textures might be interesting.
It’s true that being there can make a difference. I went to see a Philip Guston exhibition without much expectation. His best known work is his cartoonish hooded kkk figures that I didn’t think would be so interesting, but actually standing in front of them and his other work, and the story the exhibitors told using them, was powerful.
This phone pic of one of his head paintings was my effort at a photographic joke…
@AdamFromCanada I think your crops hitnon what @elstoc mentioned about my crops leaving things slightly askew; your crops look like they put major elements on the half or third lines much more than I did.
While I agree your crops work better if we consider each image on its own, I don’t think your crops are evocative of what I’ll be going for over the whole series.
Yeah @paperdigits’ crops were clearly intentional and well thought through. While they aren’t necessarily the choices I would have made (I would probably have extended the images if possible rather than cropping them further), I still really like the originals a lot and probably prefer them to the cropped versions.
new york is great, especially brooklyn. can’t beat the kosher delis there…oh wait…
new work. I could see these hanging in our county assesor’s office. very pleasing pastel color scheme.
You can certainly critique technique if you’d like.
Of course…
But I’m tired of so-called photo review forums where all you can say is:
I would have treated the subject in such and such a way, it’s too contrasty / light / dark / red / green / framed wide / narrow etc…
the author, of legal age and inoculated, has produced the image you’re looking at, with his point of view ( nice double sens ! ), his framing, his colorimetry, his processing, and will probably be very happy (1) if you say something about his image, and not about the way it was made. (1) those who read your review too, I hope, and who might also criticize this critique!!
I do appreciate that and agree that critiquing technique is often the lazy path, however if you feel the technique is so inadequate that it weighs on the photograph, then you should say so.
Nice studies in textures. I like the subdued use of color — I would also consider black and white. My favorites are the ones with wooden fences. The other two are not as interesting as textures, too homogeneous.
The rust patch in the middle of the steel door (second image) would probably also be interesting in a close-up. Maybe take a photo next time you are there…
I like your photographs. The little thumbnail of the wood fence photo in the list Summary, alone, drew me to the thread … nice composition, same with the other fence photo. Good intuition, I say.
I kept thinking I was going to reply and it’s taken me ‘only’ five days… Maybe that’s apropos given that it’s taken you until July to post! LOL
This video brought up an idea that I knew but rarely thought about, i.e., specificity in critiques. IOW, what are you / we (the requestor) asking to be critiqued? Everything, anything or specific concepts, etc.? All are valid although – as the video presenter points out through anecdotal experience – sometimes it can be of benefit to narrow the scope of requested critique. Maybe your comments about composition were intended along those lines.
Anyway, for what it’s worth to my eyes the last image is the strongest, followed by the first with the second being the ‘least’ of the four (in a relative sense). Maybe that’s a reflection of my natural attraction to straight lines, square corners, minimal clutter, visual cohesiveness and such. The last one evokes Mondrian in my mind, being clean and relatively texture-minimal. Aside from the texture point, the first one follows closely. Of course there’s nothing at all wrong with texture, it’s just how it strikes me. The second one feels a little less strong in this context maybe due to the grass, leaves and other details on the concrete.
Compositionally they all work for me. No problems there.
In the “for what it’s worth” category, unless the intent is to have the images seen as a composite / group composition, it would help to have a little space between each so they’re more clearly their own image, so to speak.
I think you had one more day to spare, one day per month it took me to post
I’ve added the video to my queue to watch. Seems like he does some critiques as well, which I’m always keen to watch. I was watching the Behind the Shot image critiques for a while during the pandemic, and I generally find it helpful to hear others talk about photography; more useful than the other “5 KILLER TIPS the PROS USE” type of videos.
Anyway I didn’t have anything particular in mind for these, other than I hoped not to hear “these are trash, throw your camera in the river”
I def. have a lot of work to release as soon as my 739th website redesign is done, so some more critiques are in my future, hopefully with tighter themes, concepts, and editing.
Also just want to get this category going. I want more talk about art and less talk about compiler options ;D
Thank you for the feedback!
I’ve added some space, the original spacing is just how the forum did it. Certainly did not intended a composite, but a loose series, definitely.
I imagine that if you already know what aspect of your image you want feedback on, you are more than halfway to answering that question yourself.
I don’t doubt the expertise of the person in the video, just want to say that I learned the most from unspecific requests, as in “what would you have done with this image”? The Play Raw category in this site is great for this — it is very refreshing to see what different people do with an image, and if I like an approach I can look into the technique to learn it (if it is not apparent).
I think the Play Raw category is great for advice and suggestions on post-processing but critiques of the shooting decisions and subject matter seem out of place in that category.
Sure, but how do you do that meaningfully? Given that there are so many possibilities, especially for subject matter (“instead of street photography, go shoot some wildlife?”).
Beyond technical shooting decisions and composition, it is hard to give useful critique, especially when we consider photography as an art form. Art moves people emotionally, and it is very hard (if not impossible) to dissect how that happens. We don’t have a good theory of art that predicts what is good or bad, every choice can be part of someone’s artistic voice.
Note that I am not dismissing the possibility of critique per se, just discounting its usefulness. Demonstrating alternatives is much more useful. I agree that doing that for anything else than post-processing is infeasible in most contexts (except maybe famous landmarks etc).
