[ Post New Message | Post Reply to this One | Send Private Email to John Kantor | Help ]

Response to www.gadsby.net/photoboy.html

from John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com)
By technical, I was primarily talking about elements concerned with the taking of the picture: the lighting, composition, and things like depth-of-field in some of your non-manipulated pics. (I can't see your original, but I believe you when you say you take a great deal of care with them.)

For a couple of examples:

The background in verosm seems detracts a lot to my eye. It's not blurred out, yet it's a drab scenes of middle greys which diminishes the impact of the silhouette. In fact the visible portion of the tube isn't much better. Verobeach2a succeeds for all the reasons verosm doesn't. Print verosm ultrahighcontrast and make them a diptych.

With Roen1 and 2, I can't tell whether you failed in what you attempted (an actual glamour look of some kind) - or were purposely creating this effect - as it looks like in steph1. I'd only believe the latter if I saw these in the context of more works which played on similar conventions.

This is the same problem with mj, self2, and the iguana - which seem to be just snapshots - without any subject matter, compositional elements, lighting, or color to give them any compelling interest - or any evidence that you are specifically trying to break some of these conventions.

A lot of your other images (like steph1) are quite interesting, however. In fact, I didn't think anyone could show me a solarized image that didn't look cliched, but bergblue is amazing. You should definitely start by organizing these pictures by stylistic categories, so that your pictures have some context in which to be appreciated. And start winnowing out the ones that aren't outstanding. Overall, people will form their impression of you from only two of your pictures - your best and your worst. It only takes one clunker to bring your stock down a lot.

I also like your website design. It's simple and clean. But the intro text is just a bit pretentious considering your style (and if it's a joke, it's not clear that it is). And I love Braniac's Daughter - but I had to get within 3" of the screen to read the writing (once I realized that it, in fact, was writing) and realize that it was a hotspot.

(posted 8784 days ago)

[ Previous | Next ]