This is a response to one of Tom's pictures. Taken at Mvlle, a fishing village a short way up the coast from my home, on a foggy summers day, limpid with a liquid green light. These two strolled to the end of the breakwater, fell about laughing, and then strolled home again, bursting with a private smugness.

-- Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se), July 13, 2000

Answers

I'd rather be there (bursting or not) than be anywhere in a Yugo... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), July 13, 2000.

Very nice, calm and peaceful (I don't shoot these :-)) photo. Balance works quite well.

I've never been in Yugo, still waiting for a ride. (Tom)

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), July 13, 2000.

I think this is a good photograph. It is interesting that, instead of the calm and peaceful feeling that this photograph ought to rightly invoke, I feel a sense of dread, maybe impending doom. The recent films "Titanic" and "Perfect Storm," and old WWII submarine flicks probably impact my interpretation. The photograph has an overall dark tone. One subject appears hasteful and both are headed for the darker quadrant where the ground has apparantly sunk. Maybe there were other people there who have since perished. The foreground contains a dark impression, maybe an object from the wreckage. The aquatic color is eerie and mysterious. Almost feel like a giant swamp monster will soon rise to finish its prey. Maybe that's not ground at all but rather the monster.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@alaska.net), July 13, 2000.

different

I like this shot. Very abstract to me and filled with many different interpretations. I would like to see one with the substances/objects in the foreground dodged out to balance with the upper sky portion. Then what would this image be? Same tones but no hint of whether these two were on a jetty or on a rocky point over a precipice. David Fokos had some images in a couple of different magazines lately and the two rocks, one on each side of the image, made me uncertain what I was looking at. Interesting image here with a lot of different possiblities. James

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), July 13, 2000.

I agree that this picture is open to a number of different interpretations - the light is quite finely balanced, in this respect, as to make the gradation in the light more extreme would tilt the mood in one particular direction to the exclusion of others. I like the way the water in the foreground combines both smoothness and texture. What is between the two people - rocks in the water beyond, or are they carrying something between them?

BTW, after seeing David Fokos' superb images in View Camera, I wrote to him to enquire about the price of a print - for Two Rocks, the price ranged from $1800 (13") to $2400 (36"). Beyond my price range, unfortunately.

-- fw (finneganswake@altavista.net), July 13, 2000.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I like images with multiple interpretations and am happy to have taken one, even if I didn't fully realise it at the time.

As well as the sense of isolated play I was trying to capture the capsule feeling of being in clock-stopping near-whiteout. It looks as if this interpretation wins out for those who weren't there to see the boys' behaviour when the photo was taken. It is very hard to judge distances and scales in this sort of fog, which the photo accentuates if you don't know that the figures are pre-teenage boys about four foot tall.

The frontmost boy is carrying a marker wand from a lobsterpot, presumably filched from nearby. In larger versions of the image it is pretty clear that he's carrying something (but what?), so I'm not tempted to clone or dodge it out. One of the things I like is the contrast between his purposeful attitude - with tool in hand - and the following boy's more jaunty stride.

That's bladderwrack seaweed and a rock in the foreground. They help to seperate sea from sky and I think that part of the frame would be duller without some texture. The very faint horizon line and the brightening towards the highly diffused sun on the right also help to avoid uniformity.

One of the things I'm playing with at present is giving the subject some space so I'm glad nobody thought I should crop. Although the lads' attitudes are luck I did wait for them to reach the right part of the breakwater - a semi-critical moment if you like.

-- Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se), July 17, 2000.

Mmmm, I like it: mean and moody. I'd like it even more mean and moody --- If you get a chance, try to print on harder paper for a little more contrast. Something like:

Not great, but do you see what I mean?

Nice picture though -- can I come and visit sometime? :-)

-- Allan Engelhardt (allane@cybaea.com), July 20, 2000.

I must ... leave ... this ... image ... alone ...

OK, so I have no willpower. I just can help looking at (and -- sorry! -- playing with) this image. It is so graphical. I guess I'm really facinated by the strong lines. I like this image. Tack så mycket for posting it.

Enough! Off to the beach tomorrow!

-- Allan Engelhardt (allane@cybaea.com), July 20, 2000.

Allan, we have a bridge now so you've no excuse not to visit. I generally go to Mvlle and the nearby Kullen peninsula for landscapes (and Denmark's best rock climbing :-) but it's a good place for people watching too. Incidentally, there is a very good book of B+W panoramic photographs taken during the building of the bridge just been published called somthing like Pylonia. It has some great people panoramics.

I love playing around with tonality and cropping on the computer and it feeds back into my darkroom work in what I feel is a positive way. It's certainly a hell of a lot easier to get greyscale seperation just right when you can alter it in real time. It's a shame no two monitors look alike though.

(I'm about to take a week's holiday, so forgive me if I appear unresponsive for a while).

-- Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se), July 21, 2000.