Rock & Kelp, Point Lobos
by PenelopeK

Comment:
It's ALIVE! well done

Divining
by skewsme

Comment:
they are like musical notes

The Ancients
by Dennisheckman

Comment:
Proud and toothless! Excellent

content with silence
by aberration

Comment:
Charming, well done, well titled, well balanced, wonderful processing - voted previously (10)

From The Shadows
by insteps

Comment:
Beautiful collection of images.
Going back and forth through it, several times, I was struck by how you captured the haphazard geometry of the place. Even when orderly organized, like the vegetable or the geese farm everything seems random, as an addition to a former structure itself added to something previously built. There are people doing menial jobs and cats and dogs and fallen leaves, yet, everything is so small and foreign.
More than anything, this essay gives me the feeling of a one-a-day shot where, not knowing where to go and what you'll find, you took a photograph at random and found out the the whole makes perfect sense and saved it. I find the end shot absolutely perfect. It does have the deja vu feel, filled with meaning and in this case it has the function of a book mark.
This and the first picture totally seduced me.

Just wonderful.

Photo Essay
by ubique

Comment:
Thanks Paul. I got it now. Yes, the lifeblood. (Picasso would probably disagree but his ego was of a cosmic size and his vanity so far, unsurpassed!)

There are also the little secondary arteries.

As the Ecclesiastes said:

All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after

We are just trying. Therefore your essay is a little jewel with many facets.

Naively, I never really asked myself what is photography. It started for me as an adjuvant. An extension to memory and to the way to try to capture one single moment of understanding before it vanishes in thin air.
I used what it was at hand. A pencil, a brush…Never thought though of playing an instrument.
We live quite fantastic lives scattered here and there and photography is one way of learning about each other and the world.

Photo Essay
by ubique

Comment:
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

This came to my mind as I briefly looked at your two-photo essay.
The happy family/snapshots and the unhappy family/the elaborate tragedy snapped and subsequently processed by mechanical methods. This consideration came to my mind only because you put into balance the value of the two hypostases.

I am somehow confused though and this is probably because of my inability of understanding photography deeply.
I took plenty of family pictures that I initially called by their French word, "instantanés". In my mind they were equivalent (instantané or snapshot = family pic where the sentimental element was the first motive of taking the picture while in a "candid" or "street photography" a lot of other factors were the incentive such as curiosity, documentation, research, quick response to a stimulus…and this before getting into studio photography or commercial etc)
This is when I had a dark room and was processing all my shots. I learned quickly to manipulate the light with my palm to cover or expose more parts of the photo paper during the developing time or cropping parts of it. Was I just "distorting" the snapshot the way you said you did with the lion shot?

This is not a comment on your essay but a string of questions.
Why do you question such different images in terms of "better or worse"?
When you question their importance you rightly add "for whom" one will be more important then the other and add that one of them has sentimental value for you.
You wrote:
"The lion kill photograph is already at a disadvantage because there are plenty of other similar pictures, or at least pictures of much the same thing".
Is it not an image with a woman in a field equally common?

I seem to miss your point completely and am deeply curious to understand it.
Perhaps instead of the lion picture you should have put a studio shot, or a "studied" shot, a gravely edited one by means of all these digital applications. But it seems to me that you compared two quite similar types.
Paul, do explain to me that I am wrong. I value your thinking a lot.

This is the reason why I love the photo essays for all these questions.

Photo Essay
by ubique

Comment:
Looked twice already and my mind's mechanism is in full action to respond to the impulse.
I need a few calm days .... Your essay needs a thorough reply.

Hung up
by snaffles

Comment:
Oh, now I get it about the training horses; I thought that you were a mere spectator!
I was here one of your 10s

~floating~
by KMcC

Comment:
This is quite an amazing shot only that the processing on the bird took over and the image lost the veridical quality that is supposed to emulate