A message to the list - remember, these reviews are only the opinions of the reviewer, a reflection of the reviewer's state of mind or thought. No particular authority in any of us beyond what the rest of us bring to this process. Dan Mitchell - Shopping Trip Well, there's a lot going on here - an elderly couple with a baby carriage makes me wonder about whether the trip was actually shopping. The guys cleaning up the park landscaping debris distract from the title's subject. It's true, the tonal range might have been improved by bringing it into balance, but actually perhaps the entire image might have come closer to its title by cropping out the gardeners and the bench on the far left. But, whatever the connection between the title and the image, there's a solicitousness between the gentleman and the lady that's charming and the little strip of green between the tops of their heads and the bottom of the wall is a mark of considerable success. Laurenz Bobke - Sun, Sky, Rocks and Water Just exactly where one needs a grad. That poor blown out sky. And a tiny aperture, hard to make useful on a boat, but you did use a tripod so a much smaller aperture might have been possible. Then the sunstar at least would have helped to bring out the line of the peak of the mountain and brought this closer to the the cliche composition. But it's monochromatic, and perhaps it would be best as a black and white.... Kostas Papakotas - Looking Out Serendipity or slightly setup it's a nice reflection upon the imagination of the folks who got the photo together. Aside from that I suspect there's rather a bit too much magenta, at least in my version. Joseph (King/Arthur) Still not speaking to me. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. enrico christion - enlightenment Lots of photo illustrations this week, now that I think about it. This one also doesn't speak to me. It may simply require some exposition or to see more of the series. Christiane Roh - november 2002 I definitely like his eyes. He seems to clearly have both a sense of humor and an acceptance of being photographer. Sure, it would have been nice if the knee hadn't been there right at that moment, and sure Christiane could have asked the woodworker to move his sculpture closer to the end of the table so that the shelving could be cropped out in the viewfinder, but that's not what she has been doing on her perambulations around her town. Definitely a Rembrantian feeling about this, although he had the choice to manipulate the light. This ad lib photography business calls for both snatching at what's there and trying to be selective while snatching. Elisha Page - The Royal Mile Interesting how the shadow lines up with the roof line of the building. The contrast is so intense, however, that one has to study the image to notice that. Tempering the contrast and possibly moving towards a vertical orientation stripping out the belltower, the unshadowed area on the far left and the phone booths (?) might bring the viewer into a speedier recognition of that aspect. Whether that's what the photographer was attracted to at the start is yet another question. Andrey Ivanitsky - Montmartre Well, this is the difficult thing about these street scenes - getting enough people out of the middle ground to permit the viewer to see the the street scene while avoiding making the cobble stone sidewalk the actual focal point. And sharpness is definitely a problem here. How nice it would have been to have everything poppingly sharp. Faster film, monopod, different hyperfocal point - all might have helped with that. Emily L. Ferguson - pond in fall Well, it's true this looks rather dark, on my monitor too. I'm not sure it looks like that in Photoshop but that's the way Netscape does it. Can't recall whether Elisha's image is that dark either in real life. I got a better balance between the light on the trees and the reflection in the original and could have doctored it further in Photoshop, but the slide is less contrastly. Richard Cooper - Safe Harbour I'm feeling the need for more information here, like on the left side, more of the scene, more picture. The boats really dominate this image and just because they're tied up peacefully doesn't mean they're partularly safe. Also, somehow, they look like their bows are aground and they're not quite entirely afloat. This is aggravated by the roofline of the building in the rear middle ground, but I'm not certain the image isn't level. At least one of the masts is vertical. I think I need the boats to be enclosed, somehow, by their environment, to have them feel "safe". Maybe they need to be a lot smaller, need a lot more grass, hill behind, sky, water. Bob Talbot - Birth and Death What a moment! What a face! Why does the image feel like it's foggy? Guy Glorieux - Old Montreal 1 Well, OK. These techniques and processes are OK, but not my cup of tea. At a certain point the same considerations come into play - composition, balance, tonal range. Too much building on the far left beyond the statue. Funny sharp shadow behind the shadow. Wish it all were a bit sharper.
