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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Let me introduce you to...

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I will try to post regularly images I like of all kinds, as well as the links to their authors.
Thanks, Antonio for bringing such an outstanding photographer to our pages. Guy is awefully talented and this picture is not "read" it is absorbed through the skin!
Asher

I will try to post regularly images I like of all kinds, as well as the links to their authors.

That is a very good idea, and please do not let the critic below deter you from posting more authors.

Thanks, Antonio for bringing such an outstanding photographer to our pages. Guy is awefully talented and this picture is not "read" it is absorbed through the skin!

I hate to rain on your parade, Asher, but I find it difficult to find anything positive in that particular picture. There is not composition to speak of, the distortion at the top is distracting and the colours garish. A waste of an otherwise attractive landscape.

A quick check on Guy Tal's site shows he apparently specialises in garish colours. They sure sell well, but that does not make them any more tasteful.

That is a very good idea, and please do not let the critic below deter you from posting more authors.



I hate to rain on your parade, Asher, but I find it difficult to find anything positive in that particular picture. There is not composition to speak of, the distortion at the top is distracting and the colours garish. A waste of an otherwise attractive landscape.

A quick check on Guy Tal's site shows he apparently specialises in garish colours. They sure sell well, but that does not make them any more tasteful.

Jerome,

I delight in you disagreeing! That means I am not talking at myself in a mirror, LOL! It didn't occur to me that the colors are garish. You may be correct. But it might be that the moors and highlands in the U.K., if that's where this place is, are like that.

Asher

I delight in you disagreeing! That means I am not talking at myself in a mirror, LOL!

You never talked to yourself in a mirror, Asher. I do read your posts. It is just that, when I feel that a picture is rubbish and the photographer is a member of OPF, I try to abide to the OPF rules of conduct.

You never talked to yourself in a mirror, Asher. I do read your posts. It is just that, when I feel that a picture is rubbish and the photographer is a member of OPF, I try to abide to the OPF rules of conduct.

Well Jerome,

It's good that you are selective! Some folk who sell their work are dead scared posting work in a forum like this as it risks seeing ones treasured photography, (that one is trying to sell), meanly trashed. I take that risk, as I feel that if I can be opinionated, (even surreptitiously), so can others. If you give it, you must take it too! We need skill to be sufficiently honest that our feedback is worthy of our intellect, LOL! It does no one any good to just hear praise, as if one were a self-appointed guru with adoring uncritical followers! Regularly I will send my more scathing criticism privately, not as a coward, not willing to admit we trash, but to avoid publically humiliating a colleague, while attempting to offer another path.

Guy Tal has a simple philosophy here. He recognizes that his work is made not as a facsimile of what is observed, but rather how he happens to see it shown:


Here is Guy's response on the strange color palette:


l let Edward Weston explain my palette:

"The prejudice many photographers have against color photography comes from not thinking of color as form."

Color to me serves an expressive, not an illustrative, purpose. I would urge your reader to spend some time reading Kandinsky's thoughts on the expressive powers of color. Either way, for that reason, faithfulness to what something "looked like" is not high on my list of priorities. I am not a photojournalist. I have written about it in my books and in numerous essays.

I hope you forgive me if I refrain from entering into a public discussion. I am perfectly fine with people not liking my work. One man's garish is another's sublime; one man's lurid is another's sensuous; one man's crap is another's modern art. Who cares? If the alternative is to try to please everyone by striving for some low common denominator rather than remaining true to one's sensibilities and expressive intent, I'll stick with the latter. I don't create for public appeal.

The very first essay in my book, More Than A Rock, is titled "My Audience." This is an excerpt from it:

"I believe that a useful way for an artist to approach an understanding of their audience is not by arbitrarily deciding what it should be and then to have that knowledge bridle their work, but rather through a process of elimination, which is the approach I have taken. By explicitly acknowledging those who may not necessarily appreciate my work, I am also able to unburden my work of certain undesirable constraints. Like it or not, you cannot please everyone, and as an artist you should not try to."

I accept (and don't much care) that the person who thought my palette is garish is not among my audience :)

Hope you're well,

Guy
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
Edward Burtynsky
I love this guy's work Got two of his books ! And you ?
Did you know his work ? Like it ? Share your thoughts, please. Thank you !

EDIT - The link to his site is not safe. Google said so. Perhaps later it will be secure. 16thSept2018 21:20 Lisbon time

 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
YOU CAUSED ME TO REMINISCE

In the 1990's I used to drive to Toronto a few times each month, to spend a day processing my commercial work. Although I had and used my own colour darkroom in my studio, it was great to spend the day with other serious amateur and pro commercial photographers as we passed by each other to get to our designated enlarger room - or stood in the large room with tables and viewing desks, waiting for our prints to come out of the processor. Plus that place allowed me to produce my larger 20x24, 24x30 and 30x40 prints that my clients had purchased.

This rental lab was called Toronto Image Works and was owned by Ed Burtynsky. Along with film processing and printing, it was cutting edge at the time with it's large room filled with Macintosh computers that you could rent for digital processing - drum printers and scanners as well.

Edward was there most days - always busy in the big factory somewhere. I don't know him personally and he doesn't know me - but I was exposed each time to his very very large photographs mounted on different walls. He has made a name based on his wall sized prints. Although landscape photography isn't a genre that appeals to me much, it was impressive to view his prints I recall.


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I won't comment on Rich: he seems to dab in various styles, but his website insists on displaying the photographs in fast sequences, so that I don't have the proper time to appreciate them. Burtynsky, of course, is world famous for good reasons.

@ Robert and Jerome
Thank you for commenting. :)

...Burtynsky, of course, is world famous for good reasons.
Indeed.
More photographers later...

Edward Burtynsky
I love this guy's work Got two of his books ! And you ?
Did you know his work ? Like it ? Share your thoughts, please. Thank you !


I don't understand the color! If it was on the side of a volcano, it would be obvious. Is it reflection, suspended rock or artist's pigment for some "happening", called "performance art"!

Asher

Here is the explanation
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
James Balog

"Chasing Ice" 1h 15m on Netflix Don't miss it !

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AK-6-08-0936.jpeg
 
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