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