Look & Learn/Hate

NeilL

Interesting to hear reactions about these:

http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/black-white-female-portrait-showcase/

Best.

Neil

Agnieszka

WOW! Gorgeous! :jawdrop

Richard

Most of them are excellent. Thanks for the link.

Mitchell

What's with the "Hate"?

NeilL

Mitchell wrote:

What's with the "Hate"?

Depends on your preferences if you learn something from portraits like these, or hate them. For some they hit the 'love 'em' button, for others it'd be more 'overdone', 'unnatural', etc, etc. Whatever.

I don't like most of them, and the others I don't like much either!:D A lot of them are like masks, theatrical masks which present a character other than the personality of the wearer, stiff and set, and masks because they don't reveal anything, just like superficial fashions don't reveal anything of the wearer. Most of the faces are objects you can admire, products of dramatic and cosmetic techniques. Therefore, to my mind, not *portraits* at all.

The others lack a reason for being. The most important thing about having a face is that it is capable of communicating, par excellence! If a face communicates nothing it is not really a face, that's logical. It is a round fleshy mass with certain features common to frogs, fish, baboons... Is that interesting? No, it isn't. Except as an artefact, as in the paragraph above.

So, I learn something from these photographs about style and technique and processing and subterfuge and manipulation and boredom. I can admire some of it at the same time I basically hate most of it.

That's me! (I am painfully aware my own attempts at portraiture are failing for some of these reasons. I'm struggling!)

You?

Nikolai

Thank for the link, Neil!

marikris

I think this is completely subjective. Personally, I love Jing Na - I even have her photobook. I admire what she does, which is fashion photography. I even follow her blog and her deviantArt. But the blog writer makes it seem like what was posted was the best kind of portraiture. It seems to lean toward fashion photography, and there is more to portraiture than that.

(BTW, if I could, I would be a fashion photographer ^_^ I love doing editorials )

And I did love most of the photographs posted, but I don't think they - in their contrived, beautiful way - necessarily comprise a "portrait."

NeilL

marikris wrote:

I think this is completely subjective. Personally, I love Jing Na - I even have her photobook. I admire what she does, which is fashion photography. I even follow her blog and her deviantArt. But the blog writer makes it seem like what was posted was the best kind of portraiture. It seems to lean toward fashion photography, and there is more to portraiture than that.

(BTW, if I could, I would be a fashion photographer ^_^ I love doing editorials )

And I did love most of the photographs posted, but I don't think they - in their contrived, beautiful way - necessarily comprise a "portrait."

Nicely put. marikris. I agree. I confess I would like to be able to produce stuff like these, but I think I would soon get bored. Of course, if it was my job I'd have to keep on churning it out. And as we've all heard, necessity is the mother of invention.:D It's an industry which has become through its own kind of necessity very clever, brilliant, stunning!

I was interested to read you recognised one of these photographers. The site has a choice from different places round the world. I wonder what's happening in fashion photography in Sth America, say Argentina or Brazil? If you can find other showcases like this I'm sure we would interested.