> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Shel Belinkoff > > Thanks for all the comments and the good criticisms. Much > appreciated. > > I was never really very happy with this photo, although I > couldn't fully > explain why. > > Shel
I think one of the reasons why this picture has been less successful than the earlier chair portrait that I saw, or Erwitt's picture of Casals' cello, or other similar photos (is there one like this of JFK?) is that the artefacts in those picture are in some way 'human-shaped'. I mean that a chair is clearly something that a person occupies, and where there is quite long-lasting physical contact; a cello is something that the cellist embraces in quite an intimate way. They are both closely associated physically with the person, so they can echo with the person's absence. Something similar could apply to an object such as a camera, a pair of shoes, and so on. However, this cannot normally be said about a table lamp, which is the dominant element in your photo. Another successful way of portraying people through their artefacts and possessions, which I recall you have done before, is to photograph their mantelpiece. This doesn't have the same physical associations as a cello or a chair, but typically the objects on a mantelpiece are of a similar scale to each other, often of a jumble and touching each other, and they form a natural composition along the same line. The objects in your photo are of quite significantly different scales and appear isolated from each other so their placement doesn't form a particularly natural composition. I hope this is a useful and constructive criticism! Keep trying things out and experimenting, anyway - it is always interesting. Regards, Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
