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Comments requested

Hi Everybody. I'd appreciate comments on how to improve this image. Thanks, Mike

expman.pl



expman_2007_03_03.jpeg
 
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Michael, before I undertake to comment on the picture, can you tell us more about it. It has an enigmatic title "Crash" What was your intention in making this picture, and titling it such? Is this image the result of digital manipulation or...?

I think it's easier to comment on how to improve an image, when we know what your goal is. Then we can help you more closely approach (or reach) that goal.
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Yes, Michael, I agree with Charles. This appears to be an image with a personal meaning. What are you trying to convey? Is it part of a larger body of work?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Michael,

O.K., I'm intrigued and you have our full attention. If I saw it in a gallery, I would indeed stop to study it and enjoy it as is.

Sometimes no title is needed and we are left to figure it out.


So this is my reaction to your picture:


I’ll take a leap into the darkness and say off bat that the image intrigues me as there are puzzles to be solved and that alone grabs my interest. The work is technically skilled. The woman has wonderful form; although I don't know whether she is say, see "I'm waiting with my eyes shut, is that how you want the picture taken! "I'm counting to ten then I'll find you!" or "This was a beautiful evening are you going to kiss me or what?" She's dreaming about the cars or they are reflected in a window?

By having no title or context, I'm free to think and roam through my own imagination.

So decide to give us your own motivations and context or not but clearly say which you are doing.

You could say: "I'm trying to convey a sense of angst about men being obsessed with machines" what could I do more? For that I'd struggle but at least I'd know what I must aim for.

Or else "I don't know what this might mean but I've been driven to make this, any ideas". Here I have already ventured with some trepidation.



Now to what I really think of the question itsel:

Now if this is given as a challenge or request for advice to see what our own imagination, training, skill, thoughts and wisdom, might get from the material you present, then fine, give us the file or else ask us to do it with what we can see you have done in the small jpg.

There will then be a family of sibling images which, as you know, I like to see as it teaches something about the creative processes.

In that case you can say,

1. Do what you wish with this and but here's my title and intent and context, so you have a framework within which you must confine your response.

2. Do what you can and wish and have your own vision to be expressed.

As Charles and Ken point out without these instructions we couldn't give advice.

Of course you could also say:

4.I have an idea in my head, fully formed or not that people might find value in this kind of composition. So, here is the result, explore it! I'm interested in seeing what someone would do without any guidance or context from me to make this picture have

a) More impact and

b) Make them revisit

Asher
 
Crash

Thanks for request for context Charles, Ken, Asher. The memory is of a young woman waiting in a hotel for her boyfriend who hasn't turned up. Sitting by a wintery window overlooking a carpark, she sees a mutual friend walking toward her. She realizes it's bad news. The image is a Photoshop enhanced recreation of that scene: a first moment of insight that your world is about to come crashing down. What I wanted to do is convey that cognitive/emotive moment. Can visual image like this one do that better? I think so. I've sent Asher a full tiff file for people to work on if they want. Cheers, Mike.
 

Ben Lifson

New member
Mr Hopper and Mr Stone

Mr Stone

You're on the track into the American grain. Edward Hopper treated this theme in a great painting, The Hotel Room? The Letter? I can't remember. You'll recognize it as soon as your see it. In it, your heroine is seated on the bed in the hotel room and has already gotten the bad news, which she's reading in a letter. Times change, the treatment changes, yours is for our times, Hopper's for his, but the important thing is to realize that your interest in themes of the heart is central to some of the interests of the greatest American artists. So keep going. If it's women and their plights in love that's on your mind you could do a lot worse than to keep looking at Hopper's heroines and wonder "Who is she today? What's her situatioin today? What would it look like as a photograph of today not a painting of yesterday?" and go out and make those photographs.

It's a long, long road a winding
Into the land of your dreams


but so well worth the travelling on

yrs

ben

www.benlifson.com
 

John_Nevill

New member
Michael, your image is interesting, i've looked at a few times and come back to it and for me it needs a splash of colour, perhaps only on girl's face and hair, but nonetheless colour would heighten the dynamics and create focus. I'm thinking spray paint type brush effect, maybe gold, pink and reds. Let me know if i'm way off here!
 
Thanks for the kind comments Ben & John. Ben, I think the Hopper painting is 'Habitación de hotel' and the theme is similar to that of 'Crash.' I hadn't linked the images in my my mind before, so it made my day when you pointed it out. John, the sources for the image were in color. I've sent Asher the original Photoshop file before conversion to monotone and final adjustements for him to work magic and make it available on the forum. Ascending layers show the process of construction and I've left in nonvisible layers to make the process clearer. The 'girl' fragment was an inserted layer extracted from a monotone work outside the image and made to fit the mood of this picture before insertion. The construction of Crash was during early times of learning to use Photoshop when I wasn't confident about working in color, with the photos taken with an early Pentax digital compact camera.
 

chris dean

New member
I have a couple of comments, since you asked.

I like the overall somber mood of the piece. I like the figure. I don't think the photoshop "glass" effect works though. I don't like being able to tell what filter was applied to a piece. . . . . filter effects are too easy a way to modify a picture. I also don't think the composition is as strong as it could be. The fact that the white car in the center of the image is the focal point kind of bugs me. Thanks for sharing your work for critique.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Chris,

The effect might depend on how the picture is printed and where you are in respect to that image. If this were 10ft high then it may work as is!

If there is something in the compositon that annoys you, that's good as it increased your impression of everything. for me, I have struggled with the picture as presented and I'd want to look at the component files.

Asher
 
Michael, thank you for the explanation, it helps me evaluate your picture. That said, I must explain that I do not immediately react emotionally to an image. Some part of me wants to evaluate it rationally before I can have some feelings about it.

So, rationally, I think it misses the mark, partly because I don't see a connection between the woman and the cars. I can see this as a woman looking out the window toward some cars, but I don't connect the two.

Emotionally, I react to this image in a way that doesn't make me feel any tragedy. I sense lonlieness and solitude, as if she's yearning for someone to drive up. Perhaps she's awaiting the arrival of her lover in his car. The texture of the window suggests frost as though it's winter, but the distorted perspective of the cars suggests a dream, so perhaps she's dreaming of a car, or the arrival of a car.

So, there's my $0.02 worth. I react much more rationally to pictures such as this and perhaps shouldn't even comment.
 
Thanks for the replies, Chris, Asher, Charles. The image dates from early days experimenting with Photoshop (as you picked up, Chris), but it's one that I've always liked despite its faults. I plan to redo it, hence the request for comments and advice. There is a disconnect in the image between the woman and cars, Charles. For her the tragedy was about to become real. I was trying to convey that mood. Female friends who have seen the picture usually infer that a lover has just left her (hence a crash), not that he's failed to arrive. I've got some thinking to do about how to make the meaning more explicit. Thanks again, Mike
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I still very much like the concept and it is worth pursuing. I'm strongly expect your current vision has changed. Is that true?

Asher
 
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