fly-by shooting
by saintaugust

Comment:


We want to be together and we want to be alone.
Shadows flying motionless use birds as stepping stones.
But every pigeon pitches pennies into concrete lakes
to make his own resounding fortune and to drown in his mistakes.
The couple on the second floor doesn't see them rise and fall.
They only see the sunlight breaking on their furniture and walls.

For me this photo is a meditation on bliss, how we achieve it alone but also as part of something. You have a beautiful texture of pigeons but you also have the individual pigeons. Less separable is the light behind them, cast on a wall full of windows.

So, it�s like this: bliss is something that you, alone, must relax yourself into, but the stream you are going into is the stream of all of our being, so bliss requires an awareness of others, a deep intuitive awareness, and together you all begin to resonate with other layers of being, like the light on the building� and maybe those other layers will open into further depths, the way those windows lead to apartments.

And yes, this was difficult for me to write, to find the words for, but the image itself is the easiest thing in the world. It is instantly eloquent beyond my capability.

The Stroll
by timfythetoo

Comment:


Composition is everything. It�s the only thing. Composition is the placement of the walker. Composition is the disruption of the composition by mad trees laying themselves down. The triangles and implied triangles of this photo are astounding. The light, absent from the trees, brings the pathway to life. The walker�s head tilts with the trees, as though infected by their madness. Art creates a world. And some of my favorite photographs come complete with a diagram on how to fold up that world and put it into your chest pocket. This one might even make a paper airplane.

This photo is barely there, barely more than some simple shapes cut out of black construction paper with dull scissors. This photo resists being seen, but then the eye breaks through it like a spoon through crème brulee� and finds itself immersed in composition, as awed with the view as that mysterious walker. I love where he or she is, in a cave of light, with his own little landscape behind him, but moving into the landscape in front of him. He is as delicate as the rest of the image. I can imagine the eye of the DPC voter crashing down in search of sharp detail, shattering everything like porcelain. No, this photo demands a gentle eye, moving slowly, so slowly it doesn�t seem to be moving at all.

'Merica
by RKT

Comment:


America, in two opposite directions flying. Left, right, up, down. And look how personal it is, brushing the top of our heads. We can feel it in our topmost chi, where the eternal soul sits on the lotus flower of our buzzing consciousness. Do we have a shared consciousness? Is there anything totally shared by every American? Is there anything that we can point to and say, �if you don�t have this, you�re not American?� I don�t think so. America is a verb. It�s like a very aggressive variation of Mother May I. �Merica base on your island? �Merica pick your next leader to make you a better ally? �Merica send some drones in and blow up your terrorists?

Just look at those mighty warplanes hopping like robins from tree to tree. �Merica home and family? �Merica climate change? �Merica nuclear war? What a staggering question �Merica is. We should be careful where we point it. Your photo, with its outrageous sun flare, its pint-sized death machines, its shingled roof, its distortions and its focus� is America. What is the sound of two jet fighters clapping in suburbia? �Merica! Oh, say can I see! And to the gutter with everything else!

First dance
by docjonny

Comment:



This photo is a great opportunity to discuss how photography �works� as an art. Each of the fine arts has its own technique, its own modus operandi, and we can gain insight into the different arts by comparing them. The comparison that this photo brings to mind is that painting is �additive� while photography is �subtractive.� The painter is faced by the abyss of the empty canvas, and bravely adds brushstroke after brushstroke of paint, laboriously building up an image. The photographer, on the other hand, stands on the cliff of TMI� every detail within frame bounces photons through the shutter of his camera: a wealth of detail that threatens to be nothing more than the chaos we see every day of our lives. The photographer�s journey from chaos to art therefore seems subtractive in nature. The challenge becomes how to remove information, to highlight and juxtapose certain elements, in order to do what art does, whatever that is.

In this case, information is obliterated by darkness, while what seems like a beam of light directs our eye to an extremely limited scene. And because photography is �subtractive,� this has an element of wonder to it, whereas if it were a painting or drawing it might seem lazy! And what are these elements? A stone wall, some chairs, and a girl dancing� or at least, what seems like a girl dancing. You could, in fact, argue that the photograph is dancing, that the dance occurs in our eyes differentiating the blurry spin of girl from the rough stone pattern and rigid row of chairs behind her. This analysis is on a mostly visual level. The title �First Dance� takes us into more literary territory, suggesting a symbolic or allegorical meaning: a spotlight on a new experience, an experience that is more universal than just one girl dancing for the first time. Blur is good for allegory, because it blurs out those details that make us individual.

But none of this really explains why I chose this photograph above many others. This choice is actually mysterious even to me. After all, when you tell your doctor about some pain or dizziness you�re having, the doctor doesn�t ask why you have it. Actually, you expect the doctor to tell you! Nevertheless, I will try to be the quack who heals himself, and guess at the reasons. It could be how solid (like a tightly rolled scroll) the torso of the girl appears even as it is spinning. I love the complexity of contradictions. I like how her head is tilted down in profile, reducing her face to just a couple of tiny strokes and emphasizing the graceful orb of her head, and I like how this downward tilt is in the same direction of the beam of light that is backlighting her. I like the composition, that pushes all the visible elements leftward, echoing the leftward tilt of the beam of light, and that makes the girl small in the picture, which doesn�t make her seem insignificant, but rather emphasizes the experience that she is having, and therefore makes her more significant. All taken together, along with elements I don�t even realize, this image fills me with hope and a sense of life. Even more, it suggests to me the ability to face something dreadful and reimagine it as something wonderful.


Message edited by author 2017-01-26 20:33:37.

dog day afternoon
by 2mccs

Comment:


There�s something to be said for making something visually stunning. It so clearly wins the day, but it�s tough to explain clearly why. Yes, it helps to have wild, even dangerous, flares of light. And so clever to have botanical claws on the other side, lit up by that same light, to form a balance of power. And of course, it helps to catch yourself standing above it all by lying down and photographing your feet. But why stunning? Why does it stun? Some credit must go to the outrageous tilt, which sends us off balance while at the same time perfecting the composition. And some to the dog and doorknob combo, sharper than merely focused. All this grounded by competing floor textures. Of course, maybe it�s the combination of all this and more, being set off balance and then thrown so many beautiful things all at once. It�s more than we can juggle and we fall over� some find it an unpleasant experience, I�m sure. They�d rather see a sunset. But others want the vertigo. Emily Dickinson said it felt like having the top of her taken off. She lived for that feeling, receiving and creating it for others. So do I.

Dreamtime
by MichaelC

Comment:
well composed

Web Design
by NikonJeb

Comment:
good job isolating the web from the background. I know how hard that is.

an endless dream of flight
by mefnj

Comment:
good texture, tones, and forms. the shadows have their own life

bigger the world not me
by jagar

Comment:
very pretty black and white landscape.

Waiting for Spring
by insteps

Comment:
great crop of whatever wallishness you're photographing. the textures and colors look great.