Thursday, July 10

Street People '08e

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Nope, didn't ask permission. And once again there's an instant just before her mask comes down. And you look inside her soul.

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For those of you who want to see the virgin images... Here we go. Thoughts?

5 comments:

April said...

A lovely girl, treatment, and presentation. I'm rather amazed you saw that beauty in such an average scene, and were able to pull it out of the clutter.

Ted said...

Hiya April,
Thanks for your reactions. As for the final versus original.... The wonderful thing about our photographic world today is the enormous additional opportunity we have for recognizing epiphany twice... when pulling the trigger and then when reviewing the Bridge. The photographic artist's world has changed dramatically... we now work upon an entirely higher plane than our predecessors who were caged within wet (largely monochrome) darkrooms.

Andreas said...

Mmmm ... haven't commented here in a long time. It's a tad dense now.

I like all those recent street portraits, but I love this image. And, of course, it's the square. Would you mind to shed light on your motivation for this particular format? Did you shoot square in earlier times? Of course, like I've often said, your results are spectacular, but at least for me fact is, I find it hard to compose for a square crop. It simply does not come naturally for me. The image that I see in the viewfinder is so suggestive, that I would have to spend much more conscious effort on composition than I'm comfortable with. I rather accept the format of the camera and work with what I have. So, why square?

Ted said...

(Andreas writes), "So, why square?"

Like Paul Strand, I refuse the tyranny of some German engineer who concocted the 35mm frame with some optical mathematics, My first professional camera was a 4X5" SpeedGraphic. And while I moved to Nikons for decades, somewhere along the line a Hasselblad 2X2" came into my life and I discovered how perfect the square can be.

But even its geometrical perfection gets boring. Yet my nostalgic trip back to it is fun for now, and he way it allows me to so easily decide between horizontal and vertical is such a relief since everything within its plane is... both. :)

Try to just build yourself a square canvas in PhotoShop before you open an image. The guide it around within that square arch. It's astonishing what you'll find that your on-the-scene eye missed.

And anything that causes you to refocus your imagination is refreshing, don't you think?

Andreas said...

I see. The idea with the square in Photoshop is great. A "viewfinder". Genius!

Regarding refocusing, well, that's what I do with lenses. Much of the time I don't use them dependent on the situation, I use them for themselves. I dive into the world as revealed through one particular lens, explore its possibilities, ... and at some point, maybe after days, maybe weeks, I get drawn into another world. It's only the Sigma 70/2.8 that keeps me much longer. Must mean something, huhh?