I like the photo and the mood of the photo, but the composition could be greatly enhanced if the white tombstones on the right and left edge of the picture where cropped out.
As a rule of thumb, anything that is light in color and is touching the border of a photo becomes an unknown distraction as it repeatedly leads your eye out of the photo. Of course your eye always jumps back into the the photo but this mental image jumping fights the overall quality of the image's composition. Your eye travel pattern can be relaxed by not allowing a white or light colored object to sit on the picture's edge. To see the difference just put the picture "As They Passed" on your monitor and then place your thumbs over the white tombstones on the right and left side of the picture. Notice how much easier and relaxing it is to view the image with those white eye grabbing tombstones removed.
When I was a student at the Art Center College in LA (now in Pasadena) many many rears ago, we had a photo journalism teacher, Will Connell 1989-1961 (Council by Connell in US Photography Magazine) who would go through a current issue of Life Magazine and re-crop most of the major pictures to improve them. I was astonished by what a few simple rules of cropping could do to improve what I thought were great images which were already cropped by great editors to began with.
Walter Holt
======================================================================== ==============================
On Sunday, December 19, 2004, at 05:14 PM, Don Roberts wrote:
Shyrell Melara wrote:
: trevor cunningham <tr_cunningham@xxxxxxxxx>Don Roberts - As They Passed Dead commies,I can't find the word communist in the comment. Am I looking wrong? I see the word 'communal' which means they lived like a small community, like 'hippies'. But I can't find where they were referred to as communists... only immigrants. ((Since they were communal, most things were owned by the society.))
In Trevor's defense, they were a communistic society. Small c not capital c! They had nothing to do with the Communist Party of the US or any other country. But they upheld the basic tenet of Marxism, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.". Again paraphrased. But they found that, over time, the society had more members with needs than abilities. I believe that is a major problem with unadulterated Marxism; it expects too much of human beings. I hope I haven't muddled their history here.Shyrellyou are a true patriot. Nice feel to the shot, but the background >distracts from the image.
For the Quality You Deserve! "Melara Family Photography" http://shyrellmelara.tripod.com
-- ====================================================== Don Roberts * Bittersweet Productions * Iowa City, IA * * Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. -- Martin Luther King =======================================================
