My Comments on Your Comments/Image #1

My Comments on Your Comments/Image #1

Interesting comments indeed. The comments range from loving the image to deleting it instantly. Thanks all for commenting. Either way. 🙂 I happen to like the image a lot; it is the type of image that might do well in a contest.

Here is a sampling of negative comments:

“I would DELETE. It does nothing for me. Just a boring image. Nothing to get excited about.”
“…Can’t find order out of such Chaos. Delete it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I would probably delete image. Actually I would never have taken it except by accident.”
“I would probably delete or modify. There isn’t anything contrasty to catch my eye or hold my eye.”

And here is a sampling of positive comments:

“It reminds me of prehistoric cave art. Beautiful, in an abstract way.”
“I think it is very special and it reminds me of a Japanese print. I agree with David P that it is a beautiful abstract.”
“I like this one because it doesn’t look like a photograph. I looks almost like it’s done with rubber stamps.Or ink strokes. Amazing what can be done with just a camera and a lens.”
“I really like it, tho’ I’ll have to study it a bit longer to figure out exactly why. One thing seems obvious to me: It’s not a blur; look at the well-defined snow flakes, some of the wing tips, and legs; and all the birds in lower right corner are sharp. The blurry effect seems to come from the snow obscuring the bodies behind it. At least part of the appeal is the muted color, which accents the black-&-white impression. Photography works in many different ways, and a “painterly” photo isn’t bad just because it doesn’t look like what we normally think of as a photo.”
“There is a balance in this image between chaos and order that’s very visually intriguing, and that makes the image work on multiple levels. Interesting chaos such as this is hard to come by.”
“Breaking the rules is pure bravery, with excellent results! It means you have a brain that can think and create. Photography becomes pretty boring if you go by all the rules.”

And here are my comments on your comments:

I try not to add too much contrast to snowy scenes. While the image may or may not be an abstract, it is not a blurred image: the shutter speed was 1/640 sec. and all of the birds are rendered fairly sharp. I might go for somewhat surreal. BTW, the dark birds are White-fronted Geese, the white ones are either Snow or Ross’s Geese. Messing around in Nik Silver Efex Pro is something that I will take a crack at. Same with trying some Photoshop filters (though I am not too good at that).

As far as a very well known and talented bird photographer stating that images should not have birds with wings that cross, that sounds to me either like a misquote or something taken out of context. With less than a dozen or so birds in the frame there are times when I would advise folks to avoid such merges and times when crossed wings can add tension and interest. With hundreds of birds tightly packed in the frame as here there will always be lots of crossed wings and merges; avoiding them would be impossible, trying to would be insane.

I must admit that I made this image on purpose :). On “rules.” There are no rules, just suggestions and guidelines. You are the artist, you get to decide when to follow them and when not to. When folks choose to break the “rules” I always prefer it when they have a good reason for doing so. “Because I felt like breaking the rule” is not a good enough reason for me…. As far as the image being “art but not photography,” I am at a loss to understand that statement: when you push the shutter button you are doing photography.

Kudos to the folks who took time to really look closely at this image. Some who were going to delete it at first glance wound up liking it…. Finally, I agree that this image might really sing if we got to see it really large; how about as a 10 foot wide backlit transparency?

BTW, if you do not like an image there is nothing to be sorry about.

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