Actually Greg is probably the shining star of Photoforum reviewers in my estimation. His reviews are frequently insightful and often quite helpful in seeing more deeply into my own pictures as well as those of other posters. They are sometimes hysterically funny as well. There are several that I positively treasure. He has a remarkable talent for making fun without giving offense, IMO. Personally almost any review is informative and to that extent helpful, at least for me where I am in presenting my work. That people don't see something about a picture that seems perfectly obvious to you can be very useful information. In some ways it may be harder to write a positive review that is as helpful. As far as the 50k limit, it's true that a lot of good photographs can survive that kind of reduction. But there are a lot of others that lose out. Personal style can have something to do with this. There are cogent reasons why that may be all the space available on the RIT servers, but making larger versions available if one chooses seems like something that might be worth a try. Anyone can do this right now of course, and I intend to give it a try at least occasionally. I'm just interested in getting an idea of people's attitudes toward it, as well as announcing that I'm going to give it a try. At 8:32 AM -0400 10/1/02, Gregory Fraser wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Alan P. Hayes [mailto:ahayes@berkshire.rr.com] >> >> I've been finding myself vaguely dissatisfied with the Gallery and ...snip ... >> ability to avoid being either insensitive or ignorant. > >I recognize that perhaps most of my gallery reviews are either >insensitive, ignorant or on a really good day both. I generally look >quite hard at a photo to try and find something I can relate to and >therefore make a positive comment about but there are times when I >just can't relate to the image and quite often that is due to my >ignorance. I just don't have the artistic or photographic background >that many of the list members possess. I don't know 99% of the >famous photographers mentioned on the list and I always have to >spend 30 minutes looking up references in Luis' posts. So sure, >sometimes people get offended when I say I don't understand or can't >relate to an image but hey, what else can I say? Other times I'm >just in one of those 'moods' where my brain shifts a bit in my head >and nothing but insensitivity spills out but of course that's a >biological thing and I am powerless to stop it. ...APH snip... > >I don't see the 50k limit as a hindrance at all. To me, calling the >gallery guidelines a limitation is like complaining that the x-rays >I tried to take with a roll of Tmax didn't turn out or complaining >that the mural sized print I made from my Minox negative is too >grainy. You've got a 50k chunk of cyber space to fill with an image. >Take that into consideration when you take the image and shoot to >fill that space not to cover the side of a building. Yeah its more >of a challenge but I can't see how it would do anything but make one >a better photographer. Remember, don't blame the tools, blame the >photographer. > >Greg Fraser >http://users.imag.net/~lon2251/Gallery/ -- Alan P. Hayes Meaning and Form: Writing, Editing and Document Design Pittsfield, Massachusetts
