My enlightened yet banal impressions of this week's PF gallery at http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/gallery.html. Dan Mitchell (Old Buoys Network) - If you cut this image into three pieces verticaly, took the middle strip and cut off the bottom third keeping the upper two thirds, then my tight croppin' eyes wuold really like this image. As it is though, the composition is not crankin' my Evinrude. Dan Cardish - I would imagine it's pretty tough to get balloons to line up perfectly but these are pretty close and anyway, who doesn't love the bipolar nature of hot air balloons. They're either quietly floating or roaring and spitting fire. Myself, de-personified. Nice happy shot. Kristoffer J Buquet (Little Surfer Boy) - Cute kid. Cute expression. Lovely lighting. What I'm impressed with though is the composition. The angle of the surfbaord, the way the stripe meets the line formed by his mouth, at the goofy green flipper, the general balance. Perhaps the orange bucket could be moved a bit either way but I really had to look for that. Wish I could do this kind of shot without a lot of practicing and stuff. Bob Talbot (Yaffle bird) - Love the name. This composition is extremely simple but I think Bob was carefull to have the beak to tail line split the image diagonally and I appreciate that. I also like the way the grass in the back looks like green fire. The blades seem to be shimmering. You seem to have quite the command over avial imagry Bob. Jim Davis (Fishing from a Boat) - Nice exposure. Nice back-light on the old tail. The bird is, alas, somewhat lost amongst all the sharply focused wood. The boat in the upper right draws me away from the bird too. Greg Fraser (Rail Song) - Th;e bricks are as neat and orderly as the day they were laid. I had to hit the railing three times with the car to get it to bend just right. What interested me about the scene was the different patterns - the orderly, rigid bricks, the disorderly, rigid railing and the disorderly, fluid grafitti. Walter Kelton (Train) - The lines of the wooden cross pieces and the left hand rail at the right really draw me into this image. Yeah, I see a big orange thing on the left, but that rail and the way it goes back, back, back and terminates at that spot of white light amongst the trees. Excellent perspective and I can almost hear the angels calling. Emily L. Ferguson (Sunset cloud column) - I am mystified by your comment 'I actually was so low on the beach in front of that fringe of grass that the cloud seemed to be vertical.' Are you saying the cloud was really not vertical but horizontal? Does that mean the grass was actually growing horizontally? Either way, its an interesting phenomena. Christopher Strevens, LRPS (On Reigate Hill) - Like the watercolor effect. My complements to your software. I don't like the liquid-emulsion look around the edges though. Rand Flory (The Cowboys) - My learned friend Vlad once told me a silhouette is a dark thing in front of a RAT! THERE! SHOOT IT! Then he tripped and accidentaly shot his baby toe off. We still go to the dump to shoot rats but we don't talk about silhouettes so I don't know if the glint of bronze disqualifies your image or not. However, I really, really like the patches of color in the black figures. I also really like the bright yellow background, the lone, rectangular window and the blue sky. I don't like seeing the side of the building with the two windows. If the camera angle had been different so that all we saw was the cowboys with their bronze glints and a frame edge to frame edge bright yellow, parallel boards with that one sunlike window upper right. Or perhaps, once again I have consumed too much coffee. jIMMY Harris (Mantis) - One of the coolest and at least in my yard, one of the greenest insects around. I sure don't see much green what with that extremely distracting purple thing under her. What is that thing? I look like synthetic tarpauline material. Did you put Mantis on it? I can't imagine her thinking she would be able to hide there. Maybe she's insane. Perhaps she has rabies! No, really, did you pose her or find her on this petroleum by-product of a blanket. Marilyn Dalrymple (Bamboo Fan Handle) - Why so small Marilyn? This question is intriguing to me. I believe you have submitted conservatively sized images before. Are you trying to prevent piracy of your image? Are you hiding some glaring flaw in the image? Are you subconciously expressing your lack of self-esteem? As for the image, I like the low contrast, light feeling. It softens the hard shadows without softening their edges. I also like the combination of crisp lines with the very diffused venetian blind lines in the background. How many fan studies do you have anyway? My thanks to all contributors of this weeks gallery and to the sometimes anonymous gallery staff. Greg Fraser Master of Funk http://users.imag.net/~lon2251/Gallery
