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The process of writing
michswiss
Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,235 Major grins
I am working on developing a better use of color in candid shots. This represents what I'm hoping to build on. Where can it be improved.
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... maby knock back some of the blue/magenta a bit?
give it some red-yellow and green and maby blend in a layer of monochrome to lighten up the darkest parts?
i dont know what you want, but when i read candid i think a bit more washed out.
Now this particular shot could have been produced in B&W, in fact, it may just look better in B&W, so it runs counter to your intention. It's very muted and gray with primary contrast being the white tree trunks.
An example of how color could be used better: If the bench was an intense color that could be perceived as antithetical to the process of writing, yet here is this person there writing.
As a photograph it has some meditative aspects that I appreciate. Trying to visualize in photographs the process of writing is a challenging goal and I admire your even trying.
M
I personally think that the colors should be richer. I would also crop out most of the shrubs and bring the TOP down a bit, but then again, it's just MOP.
Your subject now.....well.....I love it. I t kind of reminds me of the way all the Chinese sit. Your positioning of the subject is, IMOP, flawless.
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Mr. Christoferson
I love to work in B&W and I agree the composition also works that way. Compositionally, I decided not to crop any more of the shrub line. I think it would start to feel crowded if I took too much away. I might feel different if printed.
Here are the two updates with your suggestions. Improved?
1) B&W
2) monochrome layer and unsharp masking
Hi Guys,
This was orphaned in mid-feedback from the Whipping Post. I'd appreciate a quick look and closure on the updated versions of the shot along with any "Whipping"-style feedback you might have.
Thanks!
Seeing the world with phantasmagorical eyes just creates another form of normalcy - when everything becomes weird, weird is normal. Every shot has background, and that defines itself as not "growing out of"/ part of the subject. You could also see the bench as exuding from his bottom because he is sitting on top of it.
But, nothing to be gained from this kind of use of imagination, I think.
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
This shot, while pleasant, doesn't hold a lot of interest for me. It could hold more, I think, if it expressed more of what it represents. I mean, what is writing if it is not dramatic and revelatory. The image is so static and bland that what he is doing is robbed of any impact or importance. It must be his shopping list he is updating, surely nothing more. If there were a thunder and lightning storm raging around him, then yes, he would be writing!
What can be done? Well, I would get some extremes into that forest behind him - find the beasts in it! And I would find a way to make him, sitting to the side, the center of the new action in the image that you will create with the props around him.
In short, add extreme variations throughout.
Whipped?
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
I wrote something truly pithy in response to this last night (at least I thought so at 3am
But, yes. WHIPPED... :whip And I'm not afraid to admit that I enjoyed it.
Now to your suggestions. I'll need to locate the animals and hope that Zeus starts taking my calls again for the lightning, but I think I might be able to pull it off.
Pity about the pithy, hehe.
But, that's the spirit!
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
Now, if the testosterone storm has passed...
I love the subject, with the sense of concentration, and his feet turned in (although I wish he didn't have a tree growing out of his skull.)
But something is missing here. The image is flat. It might be that you actually should have been farther back, so that the subject would be smaller, almost disappearing into his environment. Alternatively, you could try this...
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
-
How 'bout? This ain't no dang wussy shopping list update!
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
But it's a different photo - different reality; different view. NOT what the photographer saw or was apparently trying to convey.
There's nothing wrong, wussy if you insist, about photographing someone working on a shopping list. I'm going to guess that this photographer is more interested in capturing reality as she sees it than she is in turning her image into something it wasn't with post processing. But maybe I'm wrong.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
So you assert... But why do you say it isn't the same photo?
And why is your post processed version more "real"?
There is nothing in my version which is not in the original, so how is it "false"?
Elsewhere, you have asked us to question the "reality" of the realism in photojournalism. So, where is your line where something crosses into "reality"?
The point of my crit and my version is to argue and illustrate that "reality" might have to be interpreted before it is effectively communicated. Do you disagree?
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
Um, ok... I can explore this. My attraction to this, what caught my eye, was the stresses between the serene setting and the intensity of the subject. Frankly, I couldn't care less whether he was writing a note to remind himself to pick up tofu (bread) on the way home or writing the next great Chinese novel. But he was simply engrossed to the complete exclusion of his surroundings and that's what I was going after. I worked around him for 5-10 minutes and he never took notice of me.
The reality is that he was making notes in a book he was studying. He shifted position several times. I waited as people strolled through the frame. Recomposed lower, higher, left, right. This is the one that I thought expressed his intensity. I didn't even really notice the tree growing out of his head until the original comments in WP.
Neil, my original capture has a slight tilt not too different to your variation. It's an unintentional attribute of my technique that I often need to correct for. But I'm a balance freak. I instinctively want to offset things that are weighted too much one way or the other. Not symmetry per se, but angled horizons need really compelling reasons to leave in a shot.
My interpretation of you're adaptation is to externalise the stresses in the subject's head. I'm not creative enough to take that on after the fact in PP. No lightning or lions are going to appear. But I seem to be able to respond quickly to scenario's where things might work visually away from the original setting.
I want to add that my reaction to B. D.'s adaptation is an attempt to isolate the subject increasing the emotional contrast between calming park and intense focus. It would be an easier way for me to PP the image by selective cropping. I'm playing with it, but am constrained by some fixed unwanted elements at the edge of the shot.
I don't think your image requires the explanation you give here - it's quite obvious what the point of the image is. You asked for a whipping, did you not? My lash was that the point of the image had not been convincingly communicated. I didn't touch the point of the image (and I didn't in my version of it). My crit applied to the how, not the what.
My version is slanted to shake the contents free from the frame. In your original the rectangular frame is very powerful. It makes the image badly repressed, to the detriment of your idea of absorption in writing, where the framing of the physical environment is likely slipping out of perception. It also allows for the other half of the idea - seeing with the inner eye, the fantasy which lurks only in mentality, the dark end of the bench.
I suggest when you call up demons you had better be prepared to humor them. I don't think you are prepared to see that this image offers more than you bargained for. Maybe after all you might have to pay for what you thought was a free lunch.
I would be interested in your crit of my version - it doesn't seem to be obvious in what you have written.
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
First, the only post processing change I made - as I recall - was the crop, which is simply changing the viewpoint. And, as I have repeatedly said, the goal is to crop with the viewfinder if at all possible.
Second, one can use post processing to turn the image into something that was never seen in real life. Look at what you've done to the slates - sidewalk - and look at the original. I have to assume that what you've done with them is NOT what someone looking at the scene would have seen.
There's nothing wrong with doing whatever kind of post processing you or anyone else wants to do. People 'cross process,' desaturate, saturate, go high-key, crop to hell and gone, clone out half of what was in the image, solorize, etc. etc. etc. If that's your art, go for it. But yes, I totally disagree with you that reality has to be reinterpreted to be effectively communicated. Reality is what it is. You can argue that it's dull, that it doesn't interest you. Fine. So be it. But deciding that the guy is writing a shopping list, and that isn't interesting, so it needs to be jazzed up and turned into something that never was and that's a different take on reality is creating fiction, not reality. Writing, or photographing fiction is fine - just don't call it non-fiction.
Example: I just finished reading Andre Dubus's novel, The Garden of Last Days (terrific read, by the way). There's a cover photo of what appears to be a strip club, shot after sunset, with a tall neon sign featuring an outline of a pole dancer - absolutely perfect, moody, photo (much of the book takes place in just such a club.) I looked at the credit to see who took the photo, and lo and behold - there were two credits - one for a photo of a motel, and one for a photo of the sign. The art director had sandwiched two pieces of reality to create a piece of fiction that perfectly conveyed the fiction of the book; more power to the art director - but that is not a photograph - it is a photo illustration.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
I would have been interesting, and I think very effective, had you actually caught some of those people moving through the frame. IMO this would have emphasized both his intensity and isolation. As is, there isn't anything to add context to or to define his intensity. This could be a quiet little park where he is the sole visitor OR this could be a bustling sidewalk. I'm not sure which it is....but I do know which location would better define his intensity. I argue that capturing those passersby would have better defined reality.
Very nice work - thank you for sharing.
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Consider the following:
- "reality" is more than one dimensional, and can't be separated from "perception". What you "look at", "seeing", is not a simple thing. If your goal is to capture reality in a photo, then the photo must be more than one dimensional and must also contain your perception, including emotional values. The raw pixels themselves might not do all that automatically and unaided. One of the differences between a snap and a photo with enduring impact and value is that the latter is a unique vision, in other words an interpretation. A camera can be used to snap what it is pointed at, or it can be used to reveal a layered and multivalent perception of what it is pointing at. I think this latter is more "real", and very much more interesting (more of that later...).
- post processing is one way to achieve a "realer" reality, which is really an interpretation, as I have said. It is no more artificial than framing and exposure choices. So long, that is, as nothing more than the original pixel set is involved. If that is done, then photographically speaking, reality is preserved. In my version of Writing, the negative of the photo is used along with the positive. Different form of same data. No damage to reality. I also reframed and relit, which are absolutely normal and historically sanctioned treatments of photographs post capture. Nothing objectionable there. These things, though, are interpretation. There is no such thing as innocently "simply changing the viewpoint" and avoiding an interpretation. Your cropping is guilty by your own judgment. Cropping calls are made with reference to some "theory" of aesthetics, such as the rule of thirds. Surely this is already going deeper, further from "reality", than you think we should.
- my version is different, sure, it had to be, that was the purpose. However, it does not change the idea of the original photograph. It interprets it differently in order to reveal more of the reality in the original. It is more layered and multivalent. Every "good" photo is a Trojan Horse, it is full of angels and demons, and it is to this cargo that the photographer must be true more than to the pixel set which constitutes that outer horse. We demand a lot from our photos without realising sometimes that our photos demand at least as much from us. "Reality" is so much more than what registers superficially in a snap. The OP talks in just those terms - of trying to "see/show" what is "inside" the snap. What I did was dead in line with that.
- elsewhere B.D., you advise this same poster that only "interesting" photos should be chosen for posting, that just because something is happening/exists in the street doesn't mean that a photo of it is thereby worth anything. Yet, here you say a snap of a guy sitting out in a public park writing a shopping list should be left alone, as is, doesn't need "jazzing up". By your criteria in that other thread, this photo should not have been posted. On the other hand, I thought not that this photo was uninteresting, but that the interest it contained like a Trojan Horse had not been revealed. In other words, that the snap had not been interpreted deeply enough to reveal the reality it contained. As well, apart from considerations of the interest of the subject matter, I think the photo contained some beauty, and beauty is intensely interesting, perhaps really the only truly interesting thing.
N
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
Bottom line is that you don't think the photo was worth posting unless turned into something that was never seen, and never happened. The photo did indeed contain some beauty, beauty in its simplicity, beauty in its quiet, beauty in its isolation. I don't think your post processing made it beautiful, and it certainly has nothing to do with reality - it is simply you fictionalizing a "real" moment and taking the photographer's capture of a real moment and turning it into your Extreme Makeover not of a real moment, but of a photograph.
"He not busy being born is busy dying." Bob Dylan
"The more ambiguous the photograph is, the better it is..." Leonard Freed
Neil, I've needed to read and re-read your comments and explanations regarding your version. I now understand how you arrived at the variation technically. I agree that it's a natural extension of classical photo manipulations but really possible only through digital means. But, I'm having a very similar reaction to your variation of my shot I recently had when our corporate marketing team agreed to use one of my shots on the cover of a white paper being published this week on Healthcare reform in China (I wrote the white paper!). I knew it was my image, but I was intrigued how it was applied.
In terms of "Writer", your version unbalances the writer, puts him at odds with his surrounding. Or rather, puts the viewer at odds as to how to place the writer in the image. It creates stress in the viewer's mind how to deal with the conflict and thus places them more squarely in the writer's mindset of only caring about the words flowing from the pen. Closer?
Your comments around once able to clearly express what the image says, the imperative moves to how it is said, is seminal. If I am going to go on a journey to become a better photographer, the what needs to become instinctive and reflexive and the how the expressive and emotive.
This is where B. D. and you are going to help me. I need to get to the point where what is seldom missed. And I've suddenly realised that this is where Stock Photography ends and Artistry begins.
But, visually I want to stay close to the way the natural eye takes in a scene. For now, it is as much a statement on my current PP skills as my own aesthetic. In this way, B. D.'s suggestions have been easier to internalise, but both of you are making me think.
I didn't get any such feeling from B.D. nor you. You both took the bones of my image and interpreted them to illustrate a point. What I've taken from B.D. with his comments on the Summer's Evening images is similar to what a good friend said to a set of images I sent to him; "I can tell when you get impatient."
Yes. What you are here calling stock photography is similar to what I am calling snaps - a certain kind of image of a certain (attenuated) kind of "reality". Elsewhere, I have talked about images taken automatically by a machine, for example a surveillance camera. Would you say your image could not have been taken by a surveillance camera? What about my version?
B.D. is right that my version is not my image, but a version of your image, an image of an image. I never intended anything else. It was meant, as I have already explained, as a demonstration of the ideas I was talking about. It is indeed an illustration, and not an exemplary image. So, I have never suggested that you should take photos like that illustration of my ideas about your image! You (and maybe B.D.) seem to have missed that important understanding. Don't do with your photos what I did with your image, but understand from my illustration how my ideas might answer your original question "How can I make this image better?".
Quoting myself on p2: "The point of my crit and my version is to argue and illustrate that "reality" might have to be interpreted before it is effectively communicated."
N
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
Nope, I got that. I know that you were only illustrating a point. Sorry if I wasn't clear about it in my post.
I might be being too literal. I don't think there would be many surveillance cameras where I was physically when I took the shot. But, my sense is that your version is the one that would be easiest to replicate using an algorithm: Look for human form. Look for negative space. Apply negative image filter to negative space, blend and tilt. Turing's test is all about a person having a conversation with an unknown entity and not being able to distinguish whether it was a man or machine on the other end. Your adaptation could pass that. Heck, there are cameras these days that won't release the shutter until it sees someone smile.
Your feedback has been extremely valuable and insightful. I'm not sure how else to say it. There's no need to reach an absolute conclusion. I just need to keep working.
Do you mean a human on the other end?
Turing's Test is a non starter. AI or any other machine or tool is by definition an extension of human beings. So in every case you would be having a conversation with a human through the medium of the machine (analogous to a telephone conversation). To do the test logically, an AI entity (of course logically Turing's Test would make the A a misnomer, as you will understand) would have to be found which had self generated absolutely independently of human intelligence. Impossible, as I'm sure you can see, since an alien intelligence which can communicate with a human and pass the test necessarily would have to have had exactly and completely the same genesis as the human. So, another human. The test becomes pointless, and the logic of the test is self-annihilating.
I think a true test would be: when a machine A interacts with another machine B in a way which is incomprehensible on every measure to both human and machine B, then machine A is intelligent. And as we know that happens all the time!
A camera can be set up to take pictures automatically. These pictures would be the same as any taken by a human acting in the same way as the machine. They both are the same thing. However, I doubt that any possible machine could make the aesthetic decisions in shooting, and choose and apply the tools required to achieve the desired aesthetic result, and then assess that result aesthetically, including the dialogs with other dGrinners here on dGrin, and revise the process accordingly - all of which are involved in effectively interpreting, displaying and communicating reality with the camera and software, such as I demonstrated.
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
I'm pretty sure the logic of your logic is self-annihilating.
Don't let stuff defeat ya!
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
Hello Jen...
Whoa....
Ok, Just my two cents folks... but I think we should really keep this about the image and not let our egos run away with us....
Firstly, I do not, and have never agreed with right clicking and taking someone's image "property" onto my own hard drive unless I ask permission. It is just not a good practice and goes against the grain of all photogs preserving the copyright laws of each others work.
Secondly, An image can always be re-worked better by someone who has more PS skills, but the point it to try and help the posting photographer learn, not "do it for them"....
Also, unless a photo holds great importance, say for a wedding or valued shot, I do not see the reasoning behind spending so much resource on trying to salvage it. Some photos simply serve to help us learn from our mistakes.
With that in mind, this is a great photo to learn from.. The tree coming out of the subject's head makes it unqualified for any further salvaging, in my humble opinion. Composition is of the utmost importance and everything else must build off of it..
I know with candid captures it is more difficult when it comes to backgrounds because your not picking them. However, perhaps it is wise to chose the candid shot more carefully and consider the background and how it plays into the shot.
Here the tree coming out of his head competes too much with the subject.
The tree head syndrom is a common mistake. So get into the habit of watching out for this when you shoot and eventually it will become second nature...
Kat