Furrowed Field 4

[Mike Buckley]

That series of articles seems to be mostly about receiving criticism and only indirectly about giving it. The photographer apparently has had difficult times in the past or known people who had difficulty dealing with criticism to the extent that they became depressed.

That's a bit different than the point I was trying to make, perhaps not very successfully, that photographs such as this series of Donald's are understandably most likely to be criticized from a premise based on the viewer's likes and dislikes, as opposed to a premise based on the viewer's ideas about improving an image by building upon the characteristics that are already evident in the photos.

I understand the point that perhaps we can't know a photographer's intentions unless those intentions are explained. However, I believe that's true only to a point. That's because the more a viewer is generally informed about photography, the more a photograph inherently reveals the photographer's likely intentions. Consider the example of a relatively straightforward landscape photograph that has an appealing composition but appears flat. It's likely in that case that if the photographer adjusted the black and white points and the mid-tone contrast, doing so would take the image to a level the photographer would like even more even though the photographer never explained his or her goals.

The context of a photo within the photographer's typical style of photography can also reveal a lot about the photographer's goals without the photographer explaining them. As an example, I can immediately think of two excellent photographers who regularly post here who post-process their images to use color and saturation in a landscape scene that clearly leans more toward an artistic expression rather than a documentary replication of the scene. It's their consistent style that is evident in their body of work that tells us a lot about their goals without them having to explain them.

[bnnrcn]

This is a very nice set,but #1 is a great image on its own