Sabrina

[Chataignier]

Sabrina lit through almost closed shutters - at a shoot with a few friends at a local château.
Bless her, she was very patient while I fiddled around for ages to get the shutter opening just right.

[Manfred M]

I am not a fan of images that are this stark that are mostly made up of crushed shadows (i.e. pure black) because every one of my photography instructors would have given an image like this a failing grade.

We were always taught that (especially in B&W) some small areas of pure black was okay in the deepest shadow areas. Having that much pure black (no textures or grades of gray) makes for a very boring image. I still agree with them. It is easy to crush shadow details or clip highlights. It takes a lot more skill to bring out the subtitles in the shadows. Blowing out the highlights (something you have not done) was almost considered a mortal sin and the only possible exception would be specular highlights.


The blue areas show the crushed shadows. Not a pretty sight.

[DanK]

I only half agree with Manfred.

As Manfred knows, I disagree with him about pure black; I think it's fine to use it as long as it's the artist's intention. I think the following is the most successful image I've ever created:



It was juried into an exhibit at the Berkshire Museum a few years ago. Needless to say, that's not an everyday occurrence for me! The black background is pure black. I actually selected it and zeroed it out to make it pure black.

Where I agree with Manfred is about the amount of pure black. I very much like the composition--the person fading into pure black and lining up with the other elements in the image. But for my taste--and I do think this is a matter of taste--there is too little that isn't pure black.

[Geoff F]

Looking at this image with the Lightbox view does show a lot more fine detail but I'm not totally sure about the composition. There are three vertical bands of approximate equal width. Left and right sides being pure black with the interesting area sandwiched between. For me, a crop from either left or right sides would produce a more interesting result and I think I would prefer to crop the right side to end up with a 2 x 3 ratio image. Although cropping both sides to reduce the amount of black would be another option.

[pschlute]

Not working for me I am afraid David, sorry.

[Chataignier]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take another look at it.

[escape]

It does have a lot of black and the vertical line on the right doesn't work for me. I would go with a crop as shown. I think it also comes down to artistic expression.

[BobGilbody]

I like the image.
David you have captured a lot. Just because some people don't 'get it' doesn't matter.
How about I post some self opinionated pedantic nonsense:

This image is a static flow of feminism inhibited by the knowledge contained in the somber darkness of unreflected realties. The grief of the model is displayed in the exquisite stillness of her resignation to the male lens probing her innermost torment.

Manfred it does not surprise me that you find this image boring.

BTW I got a gold star for finger painting in 1956.

[Manfred M]

Manfred it does not surprise me that you find this image boring.

Bob - I didn't say I find the image boring, my comment is purely about the textureless and toneless pure black areas throughout the image.

That is the part that I consider to be uninteresting / boring. Get some textures in there and some gradations and the image will look more interesting.

[BobGilbody]

Sorry Manfred. I guess this got it wrong as well:

https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroo...the-prejudice/

"I didn't say I find the image boring.... Get some textures in there and some gradations and the image will look more interesting."

Communication is not my strong point. Maybe I need professional help.

[BobGilbody]

I must be missing something. It seems Eugene Smith and Magnum and me got the basics wrong.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroo...the-prejudice/

Seems Bonhams got it wrong too. Lot of money for a boring image:

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/24073/lot/41/

I should have stuck to coal mining. Mind you that's black as well. Can't win.

[Manfred M]

Sorry Manfred. I guess this got it wrong as well:

https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroo...the-prejudice/

"I didn't say I find the image boring.... Get some textures in there and some gradations and the image will look more interesting."

Communication is not my strong point. Maybe I need professional help.

My photography instructors, over the years, would fail assignments if in their view, the blacks had been crushed too much or the whites had been clipped too much, so I have always taken care to try to preserve highlight detail and shadow detail in all but the darkest, deepest shadows.

A closer examination of the image you have linked too shows that the print maker did indeed preserve shadows fairly well, although to be frank, that image would have been really tough to print.

[BobGilbody]

Manfred I appreciate your technical knowledge. If photography could be learnt it would not be interesting. It reminds me of mathematics. There is pure mathematics and there is applied mathematics, the first creates worlds that it models, the second models the world we are in. Neither explains the things in themselves. I'll check out your web site.

[billtils]

I like the image - it's different and eye-catching. For sure if it were entered in a competition it would be marked down for the reasons articulated by Manfred but ...

[Manfred M]

Manfred I appreciate your technical knowledge. If photography could be learnt it would not be interesting. It reminds me of mathematics. There is pure mathematics and there is applied mathematics, the first creates worlds that it models, the second models the world we are in. Neither explains the things in themselves. I'll check out your web site.

Bob - I do have to laugh about this as one of my photographic mentors (I studied fine art print making under him) is a theoretical mathematician as well as being one of the top mountain and glacier photographers in the country as well as a fine art printmaker with an international clientele. In his day job, he designed network topologies for a (now defunct) major telecoms supplier for most of his career.

In photography, like most other things, the difference between good and very good is in the subtleties. Ansel Adams would spend a full day in his B&W darkroom making a print. The time spent dodging and burning (i.e. making local exposure adjustments); again subtleties. One of my other mentors was Yousef Karsh's colour print maker. It would take a full week to go from proofs to the final print. The final print would take a full 8 hours of work, again all dodging and burning in the colour wet darkroom.

[Chataignier]

Well... I'm delighted to have stimulated some discussion. I've also revisited the shot in the light of comments and am totally unrepentant regarding the black, for me it's part of the image as I saw it. However... I do agree that some of the LHS could usefully be cropped. On the RHS I've lifted the exposure a bit to show more detail of the window and shutters. Here is the second attempt, thanks for the comments that motivated me to have another go at it.

[Chataignier]

I like the image.
David you have captured a lot. Just because some people don't 'get it' doesn't matter.
How about I post some self opinionated pedantic nonsense:

This image is a static flow of feminism inhibited by the knowledge contained in the somber darkness of unreflected realties. The grief of the model is displayed in the exquisite stillness of her resignation to the male lens probing her innermost torment.

Manfred it does not surprise me that you find this image boring.

BTW I got a gold star for finger painting in 1956.

Exactly as I would have described it.

[BobGilbody]

Cheers David. Look forward to seeing more examples of your images.

Manfred good to have a laugh. BTW Eva Green makes a fantastic breakfast.
Not sure we are on the same wavelength regarding pure and applied mathematics. I spent a lot of time thinking about the difference. Sharma wrote an interesting paper on the subject Sharma C.S. ‘The Role of Mathematics in Physics’, Brit.J. Phil. Sci. 33 (1982) I'm not sure I understood the paper. I did get a lot from Poincaré H. The Foundations of Science, New York: Science Press, 1921 Poincare was a Mining Engineer amongst other things. Just my take on things but I feel in relation to our chit chat Suber P. ‘The Problem of Beginning’ http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/begin.htm and a comment made by Kac in Kac M. Enigmas of Chance : An Autobiography Harper and Row,(1985) are relevant. Kac makes the following observation:

In science, as well as in other fields of human endeavor, there are two kinds of geniuses:
the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would
be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his
mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could
have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in
the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all
intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done,
the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have
students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant
young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works.
Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber. Hans Bethe, whom Dyson
considers to be his teacher, is an “ordinary genius”; so much so that one may gain the
erroneous impression that he is not a genius at all. But it was Feynman, only slightly
older than Dyson, who captured the young man's imagination.

[Geoff F]

That version looks much better to me.