[JMitchell]

Mods can you move my solarization thread into sharing please? I want to post this image today. Thanks.

So, reprocessed the one everyone said they preferred, and thought that this was a pretty nice result. Thoughts. And no, no I wont crop the RHS, whatever you try to make me do





Thanks,


Jack

[Sonsey]

Originally Posted by JMitchell

Mods can you move my solarization thread into sharing please? I want to post this image today. Thanks.

Done

[JMitchell]

Oh well Sons, doesn't look like I'm gonna get many replies here anyway

[Rob Barron]

Sorry Jack, I just don't think there is much more to say about it. It looks good enough, not a picture that grabs my attention and holds it but it is ok.

Not sure why you are so adament about not cropping the right hand side. It is all dark, has nothing of interest and is forcing the stamen into the centre of the picture. The angle of the stamen is slightly right to left which means cropping the right edge off moves the stamen off the centre and has it pointing towards the wider area of the picture, hence a good composition.

Worth thinking about and I think you know that already simply by the fact you are predicting we will say you should crop it!

Cheers,
Rob

[Sonsey]

Originally Posted by JMitchell

Oh well Sons, doesn't look like I'm gonna get many replies here anyway

Well since I moved it for you I could at least make a comment

There are many things I like about it, the detail in the stamen is really good, focus and depth of field are spot on for me and the mono conversion has been done well with the lighting you've used.

...but in saying all that, while it's technically good, aesthetically it dosn't work for me. Rob's idea of the crop would no doubt help, but the main reason is that I'd much prefer this shot to be in colour. Some may not agree but my personal preference for floral shots is nearly always for them to be shown in colour, but that's just me.

[Rob Barron]

Jack, just one little extra comment, and I want you to take this the right way, please don't think I am being overly critical....

You started your posting of this type of picture as an attempt to aspite to the quality of the work of Imogen Cunningham. No I'd say straight away that I aspire to the work of a lot of professionals and often fail to get anywhere even close but that's why they sell pictures for thousands and I sell mine for a few quid! But may I recommend you go back to Imogen Cunningham's work and look at it with a critical eye. Look at exactly what she has achieved and try and work out what the differences are between her photos and simply black and white floral photos.

She gets tremendous definition into her work, not just because of good focusing but because of excellent control of lighting. This is something that takes a huge amount of skill as she of course can only see the flowers in colour but she has to know what the result will look like in mono. Only experience can tell you that and it takes years to develop it to her level and that of other greats.

Be really hard on yourself, compare yours to hers and ask yourself what the differences are. Then ask yourself what you need to do to convert those differences into work of a similar calibre. In many cases the answers will not be immediately obvious. Some you will discover by trial and error, others you will have to read about and put what others have learnt into practice.

In short, how do you go from a basic photo to a piece of fine art? It isn't easy, if it was we'd all be doing it and making a fortune! I would love to achieve what Ansel Adams achieved but I am light years away from him. It won't stop me trying, reading, experimenting and trying some more and I believe the time and effort invested will make it worth while. I might never be the next Ansel Adams, Cartier-Bresson or whoever but that isn't my aim. I don't want to be the 2nd Adams, I'd prefer to be the first Barron

Keep going and trying, keep leaning and maybe one day we'll have young Pixalo members saying 'What do you think of this guys? I was trying to achieve something after the great Jack Mitchell

Cheers,
Rob