(stealing a title and theme from Mike over at ToP).
Here's a photo essay from Mr. Thein about which I have but one remark. The photograph entitled "An hour before, or an hour later II" with the cafe patrons and the girl in the doorway is excellent. Go look at it. Study it. It is unalloyed excellence, genuinely superb.
That is all.
Mr. Thein is very good sometimes, Its just that I dislike having to comb through tons of rubbish (like the other photos on that page) to get to something worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteSuch is the plight of being flickr famous, I guess.
As a sidenote: Cafes are bloody picture rich environments, Never really considered the possibility till now, but there's always a bunch of interesting stuff going on and most of it works with looser compositions. I'm going to go ask the local barista for permission to set up some cameras on time interval for a day or so, will be interesting.
The light on the center girl and door frame are excellent, but why
ReplyDelete-is there a bit of a car down left leading the eye out of the frame,
-is there a bit of a plant down right leading the eye out of the frame,
-are there two people and a menu right where the eyes of the center girl lead the viewer gaze
-is the guy that center girl is actually looking at hidden behind a column and his arm,
-are the people face on the left cut by the column?
All this could have been avoided by stepping in half a meter to change the perspective a bit and zooming out correspondingly to get the same framing of the door and chairs. It should have been done before the girl appeared. Street photography is about composing the scene with your feet and then wait till something happens on that scene, the masters did not do it differently. Apparently, Mr. Thein does not know.
I am sorry, but I do not see a masterpiece.
Well, it's not your cup of tea. That's OK.
DeleteIt's entirely about the sight lives. It's classic street in the style of Winogrand (about whom I have written a great deal in there past). As an example of that, it is perfect. Not nearly perfect, perfect.
If you can't see immediately how much better Garry Winogrand is, there is nothing I can do for you. Hint: note how your eyes move from one element to the other within the frame in the picture from Thein an in pictures from Winogrand. Find out what proportion of the frame is explored in both cases.
Deletehttp://photothunk.blogspot.com/2015/07/leading-lines-are-also-bunch-of-crap.html
DeleteAnd beyond that I'm going to leave this alone now. You are welcome to the last word if you like.
While I, too, am not quite ready to place Ming's photo in the masterpiece pile just yet, it is very good.
DeleteYour reasons ivokele though are a little strange to me. You find all kinds of things that are "wrong", but I find these same things make the picture more interesting. They "force" me to look a little longer at the photo. I like that.
Please do not look at the opening photo from this article on Harry Gruyeart. It might upset you.
http://www.bjp-online.com/2015/07/harry-gruyaert-interview/
If only he had waited a bit longer to snap the picture, all those faces would be visible. And the way he cuts the figure in half at the right edge. Jeez! All wrong! What was he thinking?
Apparently, my comments were not understood. I find the opening picture in http://www.bjp-online.com/2015/07/harry-gruyaert-interview/ absolutely brilliant. I like the face at the right edge, because it brings me back to the picture. I like the kid at the left edge, who leads my eye to the shadow and back to the center.
DeleteI will stop here, because apparently I can't express what I see in these various pictures in a way for you all to understand.