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Thanks, Emily for your long critique. It was very helpful, and I do understand what you are saying. I also shoot documentary photographs for ngo's and thought this would be a good type of photograph for them, specifically here, the UN, to show the work they are doing. But, apparently, compositionally it doesn't work and technically it doesn't work. So, I guess I wouldn't bother showing it to anyone. I will leave it on my website because I still like it. I just won't market it. Thanks again!
Thought on Leslie's pic.
I really couldn't tell what was going on there except that someone's
hand was being held by someone who, assuming from his dress, was
providing a service, possibly medical.
The point of this type of work is, to me, to present the decisive
moment. There's no problem with all the preferatory shots, except
that they're not the ones to show. The photo editor's job is to
locate and present the moment, but the shooter's job is to capture it
so it's there for the editor to find. You are, right now, both
shooter and editor, so I see it as your job to present as decisive a
moment as you were able to capture. This image doens't feel to me
like a decisive moment.
Certainly fill flash was desperately needed, just to make the hand
discernable. But a bunch of cropping might have moved this
particular pre-moment closer to being decisive.
It's in the nature of pj, to me, that one grabs as much as possible,
hoping simultaneously to get a decisive moment, and to be able to
keep track of what's going on all over the scene to locate the moment
in time to shoot it. That's one reason why pjs ran so quickly to
digital, because they didn't have to count costs for film, lug film
around, wait for the results or process it themselves after fearing
that they've missed the shot, worry about their cropping, worry that
they picked the wrong crop and left something out etc. etc. It's a
very alert and adrenalated type of shooting. The zone is very wide,
you can't concentrate on what's in the viewfinder, you gotta shoot
with both eyes open, and concentrate like hell.
One of them damn skillful Turnleys just published an essay in
Harper's this month. Check out the decisive moments there.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography
http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf/
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