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11/20/2013 11:16:29 PM · #26 |
123 entries
77 votes
44 minutes to go.
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11/20/2013 11:30:42 PM · #27 |
Originally posted by PennyStreet:
123 entries
77 votes
44 minutes to go. |
and down it goes! |
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11/21/2013 12:19:50 AM · #28 |
| How does a photo of a rodent get second place in a foliage challenge? Without a single vote lower than four? |
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11/21/2013 05:34:43 AM · #29 |
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11/21/2013 09:39:40 AM · #30 |
I had the shot early on in the 4 week challenge, and was afraid that people would think as you do, so many times I thought of pulling it and going and taking a picture of a single leaf sitting in a puddle or hanging on a tree. But I left it in, because it was real, not a setup. It's one step in the life of this particular leaf. Personally -- it still tells the story of an end of a leaf, whether it's eaten by a prairie dog, or it's sitting in a gutter, or it's floating in a blue pool of water. Why would some shots be ok and not others?
I'd just never seen an animal, other than a squirrel building a nest (and I've only seen that once) picking up leaves. To me it's not about the animal, it's about the interaction. A shot just of a prairie dog wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I thought people would be as intrigued by it as I was. Obviously not everyone. :) |
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11/21/2013 10:15:51 AM · #31 |
Originally posted by vawendy:
I had the shot early on in the 4 week challenge, and was afraid that people would think as you do, so many times I thought of pulling it and going and taking a picture of a single leaf sitting in a puddle or hanging on a tree. But I left it in, because it was real, not a setup. It's one step in the life of this particular leaf. Personally -- it still tells the story of an end of a leaf, whether it's eaten by a prairie dog, or it's sitting in a gutter, or it's floating in a blue pool of water. Why would some shots be ok and not others?
I'd just never seen an animal, other than a squirrel building a nest (and I've only seen that once) picking up leaves. To me it's not about the animal, it's about the interaction. A shot just of a prairie dog wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I thought people would be as intrigued by it as I was. Obviously not everyone. :) |
You shouldn't have to explain yourself. It is a fantastic photo, and clearly, many people "got" it. |
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11/21/2013 10:22:14 AM · #32 |
Originally posted by LN13:
Originally posted by vawendy:
I had the shot early on in the 4 week challenge, and was afraid that people would think as you do, so many times I thought of pulling it and going and taking a picture of a single leaf sitting in a puddle or hanging on a tree. But I left it in, because it was real, not a setup. It's one step in the life of this particular leaf. Personally -- it still tells the story of an end of a leaf, whether it's eaten by a prairie dog, or it's sitting in a gutter, or it's floating in a blue pool of water. Why would some shots be ok and not others?
I'd just never seen an animal, other than a squirrel building a nest (and I've only seen that once) picking up leaves. To me it's not about the animal, it's about the interaction. A shot just of a prairie dog wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I thought people would be as intrigued by it as I was. Obviously not everyone. :) |
You shouldn't have to explain yourself. It is a fantastic photo, and clearly, many people "got" it. |
It's part explaining -- it's part sharing. Though it does sound like justifying :)
Here's the sharing part:
We stayed there watching for quite awhile. Mostly because they would be scavenging around picking up mostly thin, long yellow leaves that weren't interesting. I was fascinated with the fact that they were eating leaves to begin with. But the laves were falling into the enclosure while we were watching. My husband, daughter and I would be routing for the leaves to blow closer as they came floating down. And we'd be saying "it's right behind you!!" to critters that, of course, paid absolutely no attention to crazy people talking to leaves and prairie dogs.
I get a little involved when photographing wildlife. Luckily, my husband and daughter were just as stupidly fascinated. :) |
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11/21/2013 08:35:31 PM · #33 |
| Surely you all realize Don's post was directed at the voters and not the photographer. |
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11/22/2013 11:35:15 PM · #34 |
Originally posted by skewsme:
Surely you all realize Don's post was directed at the voters and not the photographer. |
...and just why would the voters need any form of admonishment from anyone relative to their voting preferences.
Voting patterns are the result of one's personal preferences and could be discussed ad nauseam, and although viewpoints may differ, it does not follow that one has to be wrong.
Ray |
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11/22/2013 11:46:39 PM · #35 |
Originally posted by RayEthier:
Originally posted by skewsme:
Surely you all realize Don's post was directed at the voters and not the photographer. |
...and just why would the voters need any form of admonishment from anyone relative to their voting preferences.
Voting patterns are the result of one's personal preferences and could be discussed ad nauseam, and although viewpoints may differ, it does not follow that one has to be wrong.
Ray |
I didn't say they were wrong. How can they possibly be wrong? Is the weather wrong when it rains on you?
I'm just astonished. I'm the blind man who thinks an elephant is a rope and doesn't understand how the rope could be stepping on him.
Not a single DNMC voter depositing a 3 on this photo? Not a single landscape worshiper dropping a 3 on this photo? I just don't get it. Maybe it's just part of the general decline. |
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11/22/2013 11:50:29 PM · #36 |
| Why must it be a symptom of decline? Why not a celebration of acceptance? |
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11/23/2013 06:07:02 AM · #37 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
Originally posted by RayEthier:
Originally posted by skewsme:
Surely you all realize Don's post was directed at the voters and not the photographer. |
...and just why would the voters need any form of admonishment from anyone relative to their voting preferences.
Voting patterns are the result of one's personal preferences and could be discussed ad nauseam, and although viewpoints may differ, it does not follow that one has to be wrong.
Ray |
I didn't say they were wrong. How can they possibly be wrong? Is the weather wrong when it rains on you?
I'm just astonished. I'm the blind man who thinks an elephant is a rope and doesn't understand how the rope could be stepping on him.
Not a single DNMC voter depositing a 3 on this photo? Not a single landscape worshiper dropping a 3 on this photo? I just don't get it. Maybe it's just part of the general decline. |
i thought about giving it a 3 :) |
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11/23/2013 08:15:51 AM · #38 |
What a joy this has been to see this discussion in the forums and in the comments on the photo. How ironic that the king of out of the box is disappointed that people embraced something that he sees as out of the box for this challenge, and that he sees it as a general decline.
I can handle photography discussions after a challenge. When Don asked me how the hell my rubber band entry ribboned -- I agreed. I wasn't happy with it, and I didn't think it was that good of a photo. That type of critique, why not? But it shouldn't be here because it doesn't fit the challenge seems like a tacky type of postmortem.
I enjoy the competition, so more often than not, when I have difficulties deciding I go with the shot that I think will do better. This is actually one of the times that I went with a shot that I liked better. I actually thought that people would vote this down. I thought it fit fine, but I thought that people would be thinking like Don, and it would be hit. I had this shot very early in the challenge, and I kept telling myself to go shoot some landscape, or some ice-tinged leaf, or try some long-exposure abstracts. But I thought this was different, fun, out of the box, yet will still fitting the challenge with an interesting, natural, not set up shot. So this week had been a lot of fun up until this point. I expected comments during the voting. But afterwards, it really does seem tacky. Are you just trying to convince people to lower their vote in the future for things you think don't meet the challenge? You may have succeeded. Let's get more 1s, 2s, and 3s!
Now can we move on to something a little more useful -- such as the discussion of negative space that you had been trying to bring up earlier? I think that would be time better spent.
Message edited by author 2013-11-23 09:16:32. |
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11/23/2013 08:56:01 AM · #39 |
Wendy, relax we still all love you!
I always say to myself, at the end of the day, it's just a photo competition site, it's not that important in the scheme of things :) |
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11/23/2013 09:43:04 AM · #40 |
Sorry you're taking this personally and assuming that I actually want people to vote down dnmc photos, no matter how much I explain otherwise.
My temporarily deleted thread about negative space is still gone, last I checked. |
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11/23/2013 09:44:06 AM · #41 |
How ironic that the king of out of the box is disappointed that people embraced something that he sees as out of the box for this challenge, and that he sees it as a general decline.
This sentence is plain wrong. Nothing is ironic here. What people embrace is not necessarily a validation of any work of art. There is one appreciation for a NG shot, other for a picture in a challenge, etc etc. Just take both admiration and criticism; do not discard one or the other.
The "decline" here might be the familiarity that we got with a certain style, specific treatment, subject, with the fight for a silly blue ribbon no matter what, with gentle remarks and love or kind acceptance. I'm afraid that more often then not people vote with what became familiar to them or what they expect to see. Sometimes to what they'll strive to do technically. We became too chummy. I don't endorse maliciousness by any means. Just a little desire to enlarge our horizons.
There is an immense audience that adores Gerhard Richter, the painter. And here is an excerpt of what a notable art critic wrote about Richter:
Gerhard Richter is a bullshit artist masquerading as a painter.
...Richter presents his murky images with the certainty of scientific proofs. These paintings have a technological veneer. They are handmade objects with a weirdly mechanized gleam. And this effect turns Richter's canvases into the ultimate buyables for hip collectors who want something that fits right in with their electronic gadgetry and sparely expensive décor.
â€Â¦Richter sneaks to the public pictures of his cute wife and children rendered in a soft focus dime-store Vermeer's style that is apparently mistaken for the real thing.
There is much talk about the range of Richter's work. He does paintings after news photographs and family snapshots, he does landscapes and seascapes and still lifes, he does abstractions with bold brushwork and others with viscous rivulets of paint. Yet everything that Richter paints brings us back to the same tepid, tamped-down vision. Each image looks as if it were excerpted from some vast, undifferentiated stock of images.
â€Â¦.I do not dislike one or another of Gerhard Richter's paintings. I reject the work on fundamental grounds, as a matter of principle. I do not accept the premise on which his entire career is based: that in the past half-century painting has become essentially and irreversibly problematical, a medium in a condition of perpetual crisis.
For the entire article
Jed Perl on G. Richter
Just relax.
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11/23/2013 09:53:02 AM · #42 |
| One more thing about my motivation here. It is primarily befuddlement. When something happens more than once that you can't make sense out of, you tend to question it. Surely there is some ingredient that you are just missing, and you're hoping somebody will know. Unfortunately, in this case nobody seems to know and they are questioning me instead of answering me. |
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11/23/2013 10:03:24 AM · #43 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
One more thing about my motivation here. It is primarily befuddlement. When something happens more than once that you can't make sense out of, you tend to question it. Surely there is some ingredient that you are just missing, and you're hoping somebody will know. Unfortunately, in this case nobody seems to know and they are questioning me instead of answering me. |
Could it be that one must have a full grasp of the question being asked before even contemplating the formulation of a response.
It is possible that befuddlement abounds in this instance and this trait might have impacted on the voting habits of some?
Ray
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11/23/2013 10:56:57 AM · #44 |
Originally posted by RayEthier:
Originally posted by posthumous:
One more thing about my motivation here. It is primarily befuddlement. When something happens more than once that you can't make sense out of, you tend to question it. Surely there is some ingredient that you are just missing, and you're hoping somebody will know. Unfortunately, in this case nobody seems to know and they are questioning me instead of answering me. |
Could it be that one must have a full grasp of the question being asked before even contemplating the formulation of a response.
It is possible that befuddlement abounds in this instance and this trait might have impacted on the voting habits of some?
Ray |
sorry, ray. Sometimes I can't even parse what you're saying. |
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11/23/2013 11:04:42 AM · #45 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
One more thing about my motivation here. It is primarily befuddlement. When something happens more than once that you can't make sense out of, you tend to question it. Surely there is some ingredient that you are just missing, and you're hoping somebody will know. Unfortunately, in this case nobody seems to know and they are questioning me instead of answering me. |
Avg (all users): 7.1807
Avg (commenters): 8.1111
Avg (participants): 6.9815
Avg (non-participants): 7.5517
Simply, I think the answer is that the majority of voters saw a beautiful image and that's what they want to vote high. Is that decline? I doubt it. It's just mass appeal. Is it disappointing? Perhaps, most understandably so to those who may have created a beautiful image that was truly on topic. But there are many of us, myself included, who are mostly befuddled about art and scores and for whom there will never be an answer. I for one enjoy that part of DPC.
No ones and twos?... maybe the DNMC police weren't out this time around.
To me the image is seasonal but not about foliage. I gave it a 5 as he winked in passing. |
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11/23/2013 11:22:37 AM · #46 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
Sorry you're taking this personally and assuming that I actually want people to vote down dnmc photos, no matter how much I explain otherwise.
My temporarily deleted thread about negative space is still gone, last I checked. |
I guess I just don't understand how I was supposed to take this then:
I'm just astonished. I'm the blind man who thinks an elephant is a rope and doesn't understand how the rope could be stepping on him.
Not a single DNMC voter depositing a 3 on this photo? Not a single landscape worshiper dropping a 3 on this photo? I just don't get it. Maybe it's just part of the general decline.
It sounded like you were saying it's a negative thing that they didn't vote down what you perceived as a DNMC photo. Otherwise why is it part of the general decline?
I shouldn't have responded this morning. My husband told me not to -- but I was tired of hearing it for the third day. Isn't there an off chance that people didn't find it as DNMC as you did? Or as you thought they should have?
There are just times where you get kind of tired of your work being put down and belittled. Over and over and over you hear about ribbon winners photos being uninspiring, worthless, eyecandy, lowering the quality of photography. I'm not a Coley, I'm not a Tanguera, but I've tried so hard to improve in the areas where I lack. You can't force creativity, you can only learn at the speed at which you can learn at -- and I use this place to try to keep learning. I've really tried to stay out of all the other conversations pulling apart popular photography, but this one was too difficult.
I'm sorry I had my own vision of how I saw this challenge. I'm sorry that people liked it. I'll try to fit inside the box more, because this sure as hell wasn't worth it.
I'm done with this now. The rant is over.
Message edited by author 2013-11-23 11:29:53. |
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11/23/2013 12:32:53 PM · #47 |
This is a conversation in which I'd love to have been a participant. Too late now, I suspect.
There is no DNMC. As a voter you can't say DNMC, you can say only, "I don't get it". How can you know what was in the photographer's mind? To presume to do so by proclaiming DNMC is an indictment of yourself, rather than of the photograph. You are entitled to not get it, and vote accordingly. That's definitely not the same as saying DNMC, which is just an unpardonable arrogance.
I appreciate that this distinction was not at all what Don was addressing, but I like to take every opportunity, however indirect, to jump onto that soapbox. |
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11/23/2013 12:53:39 PM · #48 |
Thanks for that M. Fascinating reading, though I was well out of my depth with much of it. But I did like this snippet from Perl:
Technique is just a form of visual static that disrupts--and confers a false importance upon--banal images.
Message edited by author 2013-11-23 12:54:48. |
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11/23/2013 01:37:51 PM · #49 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
Maybe it's just part of the general decline. |
This sentence alone has gotten me into trouble. But I'm only talking about a decline in participation affecting voting patterns. Just a shot in the dark since nobody else was coming up with theories.
Btw, if I thought the image deserved less than four then you would have one vote under four.
And you are every bit as good as those other ribbon hogs. You don't need any other validation.
Look at the blue in droste. I'm a little surprised that a complete nonsense image won the blue, but I do at least know some reasons for it. People recognized the artist and automatically decided it was genius. Also he got six votes under four. So I am disappointed but not befuddled.
If anything, I'm wondering if you have some secret for scoring high outside of the box. |
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11/23/2013 02:00:26 PM · #50 |
Originally posted by posthumous:
Originally posted by posthumous:
Maybe it's just part of the general decline. |
This sentence alone has gotten me into trouble. But I'm only talking about a decline in participation affecting voting patterns. Just a shot in the dark since nobody else was coming up with theories.
Btw, if I thought the image deserved less than four then you would have one vote under four.
And you are every bit as good as those other ribbon hogs. You don't need any other validation.
Look at the blue in droste. I'm a little surprised that a complete nonsense image won the blue, but I do at least know some reasons for it. People recognized the artist and automatically decided it was genius. Also he got six votes under four. So I am disappointed but not befuddled.
If anything, I'm wondering if you have some secret for scoring high outside of the box. |
Yup -- it got you in trouble again. :)
(or it got me in bigger trouble for shooting off my mouth) :D
Because I thought you meant decline in quality. Everybody talks about the decline in the quality of the site. So it sounded like you were saying that the quality of the sight has declined, and the fact that no one bothered giving my shot a 1, 2, or 3 was proof of that. yada, yada, yada...
Decline in numbers makes sense. I was surprised (but pleased) with the lack of trolls. (hehe, yup, trolls. Actually, 1s and 2s are trolls, imo, 3s are valid, but that's for another forum... :)
Ok -- so this could have continued as a discussion. If just felt that it had degenerated into something more personal. And it seemed so silly when it felt like it was coming from you over a shot that I almost didn't enter, because I figured it wouldn't have a wide appeal. Multiple levels of irony.
These aren't the droids you're looking for -- move along -- move along... |
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