Outtakes on Texture, and some different DOF takes.

07/30/2002 08:20:42 AM · #1

Well, after my Revelation photo was so roundly rejected, I took another crop to minimize the effects of the tight DOF. As well, there are some other shots I didn''t submit, including one that I think would have been better received, "Heavenward".

In particular, I''d be curious to hear from those that really hated Revelation.

Texture Outtakes

* This message has been edited by the author on 7/30/2002 9:28:44 AM.

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED

07/30/2002 09:34:01 AM · #2

I agree with whoever posted that we need more threads on the front page. Stuff scrolls off WAY too fast. How many people actually go through the forum front page to get to posts?

hokie

Nikon D2X

07/30/2002 09:42:26 AM · #3

I like the redux there welcher but heck..I am one of the 3 people that gave you a 10 :-) so I don't think you are going to win me over much more.

My question Welcher. Was the Original the way you intended the shot to look? Even after the critiques and all, did you STILL feel that the original was perfect?

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED

07/30/2002 11:09:49 AM · #4

Originally posted by hokie:
I like the redux there welcher but heck..I am one of the 3 people that gave you a 10 :-) so I don't think you are going to win me over much more.

My question Welcher. Was the Original the way you intended the shot to look? Even after the critiques and all, did you STILL feel that the original was perfect?

I understand your point, and agree with you. However, given the almost universal dislike for a particular aspect of my entry (in this case the shallow DOF), I still think it's instructive to explore a bit and find out why it was frowned upon, and perhaps how to make it better to the general public, regardless of my personal feelings on it.

To answer your question, though, I still like it a lot, although I'm kind of digging "Heavenward" a bit more now, and am wondering whether I should have submitted that.

hokie

Nikon D2X

07/30/2002 11:29:40 AM · #5

I guess you see where I was going.

An artist (and I say good photographers are artists) have this dilemna. Do what you want or do what others want.

If you are GOOD and have something to say..you are better off doing what you want. You will learn to tweak your style enough in time with practice to present a clear voice.

But if you START off trying to please others as your priority I think you can kill your creativity.

I always like to use Jackson Pollack as my example because he is my personal artistic hero but look at Michealangelo. He was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel but he painted it his way..to the point of even being threatened with excommunication (or whatever the catholics do to other catholics when you piss off the church).

But I believe he had a few supporters including the Pope at that time and now look at it..one of the modern art wonders of the world.

I just wonder with the internet and all these ready to go instant opinions where art will go. Actually, most of the artists I know don't have internet connections....:-)

TerryGee

Canon EOS-30D

07/30/2002 12:36:20 PM · #6

Looking at your photo again(which I did not rate high..sorry) it is definitely the blurry foreground that I had problems with. I like the angle of the shot, and the narrow DOP in the background, but needed to see the foreground clearly to get the feel of the texture.
Hope this helps...just one little opinion..

07/30/2002 01:18:55 PM · #7

Originally posted by TerryGee:
Looking at your photo again(which I did not rate high..sorry) it is definitely the blurry foreground that I had problems with. I like the angle of the shot, and the narrow DOP in the background, but needed to see the foreground clearly to get the feel of the texture.
Hope this helps...just one little opinion..

I appreciate the input. Did you notice "Revelation Redux" on my outtakes page? Does that improve things for you at all?

Journey

Canon PowerShot G3

07/30/2002 01:26:13 PM · #8

Welcher, I think Redux and a few other of your outtakes would have done much better for the challenge. I gave revelation a low score as well (sorry) and even after reading the comments I would still give it a low score. Have the same problems as Terry mentioned in the post above. However, if there had been something elsewhere very strong to grab my attention (don't know how to put this better) I might have been more foregiving or, better put, understood better your intentions.

In defense of the low-voters now being accused of criticizing sophisticated pictures "going way above their heads" I offer the following: You are being presented to look at 217 pictures in just a week. That's an awful lot to look at and a lot of COMPARING to be made. So, the eye and the mind makes some sort of unconscious selection criteria: "show me stuff that drives the message home to me fairly strongly in a first pass of looking at the pictures". Then, your mind sorta sub-classifies the image to be able to keep track of it mentally. Yours went in my mental sub-classification of "wallpaper", none of which did very well in my voting.

Perhaps, that is one reason why subtle pictures don't fare so well in dpc challenges.

Just my two cents (US or Euro)

TerryGee

Canon EOS-30D

07/30/2002 01:42:01 PM · #9

Journey - very well put. I too feel that in the comparison process with so many photos something has to reach out and grab you. Sometimes it is the color, sometimes the technique, sometimes the subject. If nothing jumps out with a difference it just falls into the mass catagory. Similar to the rest, average.
Welcher - I did look at the others. It would have scored a little higher, but not dramatically. It is still slightly blurred in the foreground. I also liked the first one(Iforgot the name) with the blue sky in the background.

07/30/2002 02:50:25 PM · #10

Originally posted by Journey:

In defense of the low-voters now being accused of criticizing sophisticated pictures "going way above their heads" I offer the following: You are being presented to look at 217 pictures in just a week. That's an awful lot to look at and a lot of COMPARING to be made. So, the eye and the mind makes some sort of unconscious selection criteria: "show me stuff that drives the message home to me fairly strongly in a first pass of looking at the pictures". Then, your mind sorta sub-classifies the image to be able to keep track of it mentally. Yours went in my mental sub-classification of "wallpaper", none of which did very well in my voting.

Perhaps, that is one reason why subtle pictures don't fare so well in dpc challenges.

Just my two cents (US or Euro)

I certainly don't mean to start a "class war" here! ;) I appreciate everyone's opinions, and I think the sheer volume on comments on the shallow DOF rules out the notion that it was a problem with the voters. More likely, it was something that appealed to me but that didn't to "the masses".

I am curious about your seeming pejoritive use of the word "wallpaper". I'd be interested to hear your definition in the context of this challenge, and why mine fit into that classification.

TerryGee

Canon EOS-30D

07/30/2002 03:07:34 PM · #11

I don't think yours was necessarily a wallpaper shot. Your angle and DOP kept it from becoming one.
I think the cantalope, and the rabbits fur were wallpaper shots. I define a wallpaper shot as one that is the same throughout the picture. Side to side and top to bottom.

floyd

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

07/30/2002 03:15:44 PM · #12

I understand your need to explore what people didnt like about your picture and I'm sure that will feed back into your future work. But the *real* creatives in the world don't concern themselves overly much with whether everyone understands their work.

Of course most real creatives aren't usually appreciated until they're dead.

I guess what Im trying to say is - sure learn what people like but make sure your photographs are at least as much about what YOU like.

John

myqyl

Nikon D3100

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G DX VR

07/30/2002 03:46:21 PM · #13

I''d like to chime in as one of the folks you are thinking of trying to please. I gave ''Revelation'' a 6... Which from me means, technically well done, it just didn''t thrill me... The short DOF wasn''t the problem and I couldn''t quite say what was the problem... It just didn''t grab me...

But before you start changing your style to try and shot for my eye, please keep this in mind... I never saw what the big fuss about the ''Mona Lisa'' was... Granted it was a cute model with a nice smile, but otherwise... Well I give it a 7.

Also, I should point out that with fewer shots in the challenge I would likely have been able to go through all the shots one more time (I only went through twice this week) and your shot would likely have gotten a 7 or maybe even an 8...

Shot what you love and the scores will follow...

PS ~ Rick Martin wrote a song about a "Garden Party" that I really think you need to listen to a few dozen times before you try to change to please everyone :)

* This message has been edited by the author on 7/30/2002 3:48:27 PM.

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G DX VR

07/30/2002 03:53:02 PM · #14

You guys are making a point I already agree with. I really like "Revelation" (though I'm liking "Heavenward" more and more...), but the huge numbers of folks complaining about the same thing merits some understanding.

In some cases, folks are nuts for shallow DOF. In the case of "Revelation", not. I'm starting to think that it's because the shallow DOF didn't serve to make any one thing stand out, like it does in a portrait, or a flower shot. It was just a bit of stone that stood out more than another bit of stone. That's legit criticism.

I wish, for the sake of my "standing" on this site, the photo did better. As far as what I took back from Munich, and the pleasure I get out of looking at that photo, those remain unaffected.

Journey

Canon PowerShot G3

07/30/2002 03:59:42 PM · #15

Welcher, you are certainly not starting a class war:) I was reacting to some of the post results comments on your pic and elsewhere. It also seems with Revelation that you are developing your way of "seeing" things and interpreting them into a more personal language and certainly don't mean to discourage you with that. Quite the opposite!!!

I didn't care for the wall-to-wall texture images (cantaloupe, 1 or 10000 ft, etc.) no matter how technically good they were. Yes, I see that your picture tried to say more than that and if you had made that a little stronger you could have gotten a strong image indeed. Mind you, all this is very much my own personal taste.

I can see only with my own eyes and only judge images with my own emotions and tastes. Sorry therefore for all the *I*s and *me*s. There has to be something that I can relate to, that I can "feel". So my mind is saying things like: move me, entertain me, shock me, show me to look at something in a way I haven't done before, delight me, etc, etc.

You know it is all a learning process for me: developing tastes (it took me a long time to *know for myself* what a great artist Paul Klee was). Voting is a learning process, too. HELL, I have learned so much in my 3 weeks here that I'm considering to stop submitting until I have learned more about photography and can afford a much better camera (not for a while). Lots of tormenting thoughts.

myqyl

Nikon D3100

07/30/2002 04:01:41 PM · #16

Originally posted by welcher:
...), but the huge numbers of folks complaining about the same thing merits some understanding.

This is a wild stab in the dark here, but it comes as a Revelation to me, so I thought I'd share it...

There were several shallow deapth of field shots in the Texture challenge that didn't work (at least for me)... Perhaps in the dark recesses of my mind, a bias against shallow deapth of field was born after seeing it misused several times. Perhaps Revelation was more a victim of circumstance then actually flawed... In fact the more I look at it now, the more I'm convinced of that possibility.

I could be VERY wrong here... Just ask my wife, she'll tell you that happens A LOT!

Journey

Canon PowerShot G3

07/30/2002 04:17:30 PM · #17

Originally posted by myqyl:

There were several shallow deapth of field shots in the Texture challenge that [i]didn't work (at least for me)... Perhaps in the dark recesses of my mind, a bias against shallow deapth of field was born after seeing it misused several times. Perhaps Revelation was more a victim of circumstance then actually flawed... In fact the more I look at it now, the more I'm convinced of that possibility.

[/i]

Yes, you are absolutely right there. You do develop certain biases and also benchmarks while looking through that many pictures. On the benchmarks: The chain image submitted by Drew I liked a lot and it became the benchmark against which I compared all other chain images; ditto with the ropes. So, yeah, all sorts of biases are being developed to cope with the sheer volume of pictures to look at.

PS: I'm such a darn slow poster. By the time my posts get submitted it is typically some sort of repeat of other posts that have been added while I was typing away.

aelith

Olympus C-3020Z

07/30/2002 09:15:48 PM · #18

Welcher. As a calligrapher your subject matter fascinated me. As an artist the scale between the weathering of a rock and the weathering of the earth has often caught my eye. I wish I could see it and touch it. I could examin it endlessly. So all your outtakes were wonderful to me. aelith

UberFish

Fujifilm FinePix S2 Pro

07/31/2002 12:39:30 PM · #19

I'm starting to realise that having more than about 1/3 of the picture out of focus is when you have to start justifying the blurred areas.
This picture certainly suffered from being marked down for this //www.dpchallenge.com/image.asp?IMAGE_ID=3546

There are also other rules of thumb that seem to apply to dpc, such as stick to bright colours, avoid ugly subjects, dont use macro. Personally I'm pretty ambivalent to some of the twee stuff that gets high votes here, they look nice, but they dont have the staying power that drama and mood will give you.