The Superior Photographer

Love that cow shot.

With voting over, I want to point out that panoramic photos must be viewed LARGE to see what is going on. http://quickshotartist.com... has to be nearly full screen on a large display to see the detail, which is tiny relative to the large field of view. That's a limitation of the format, but it's good in a different way. On small format devices like cell phones, there is software that allows scrolling around in the image. The photaf panorama app on cell phones works pretty well.

Thanks to everyone for their comments.

I'm happy to accept your pleint on the basis that you find and underline the quote where I applied the extremist 'only' in my illustration . I excluded nothing. I'll spell it out. Even though I made a living delivering technically excellent work as a condition of being paid, my true sentiments lay in finding subject matter that appealed to my inner poet. Also, photography minus music is sterile. One can be a poet with a Parker or a Pentax. Because people with all their warts are my core interest, I find pictures of fountains, drinking or otherwise, a tad on the dreary side, unless interpreted by someone like Edward Weston, Weegee, Cartier Bresson etc. who would actually make a statement about them. In other words, I like the things that go way beyond the surface niceties and easy decorative gloss and address one's deeper being. I am blessed with the gift of working with things and with people. What you've presented as an 'argument' says little to me for absence of persona interpretation. For inspiration I turn to non photographers like Andrew Wyeth, A D Coleman and M C Escher. The sanctemonious and self righteous among us are entitled to their cheap observations. It's just that I like my potatoes with a little dirt on them. Cheers!

@racist, Only photos like girls dying in Bolivia are worthwhile? Silly comments, and useless to the photographers.

and shot a model on leopard skin. The result was pure kitsch schlok of the vomitorium variety. The next shot, from some peasant in Bolivia of his little girl dying, had all three of us judges in tears simultaneously. I speak to you not as a photograhper, but as a plain old fashioned human being. I plead for a kick in the guts. A moment to catch the breath. An effect to remember, like the girl in Vietnam burned with napalm. Like the tragedy of Minemata. Something bold, something alive and vibrant and haunting. Something to REMEMBER. Cheers!

Unfortunately, fellas, I feel cornered and am therefore compelled to cast a plague on both your houses.I speak not only as a retired industrial (large format camera) career commercial photographer, a current judge very frequently invited on the camera club circuit , a lecturer on "The psychology Of The Photograph" to a large variety of audiences and a current practitioner of the surreal arts on the large art website "Deviant Art". My pictures are there for full scrutiny under the username "flatearther".

I have read your arguments and I have seen all four submissions for those arguments.
The overwhelming effect created for me was of a couple of teenage bantams preening and showing off the size of their equipment. Your pictures are technically sufficient, but having said that, the technology available today would call for some real high calibre talent to get a lousy technical result. Yet, even technically perfect results can be like listening to some classical guitar geek boring an audience witless for the simple lack of heart and humanity. I have felt more joy in a small music machine than from some technically perfect musicologists. Your shots capture THINGS. If you were transported in a time capsule to Leonardo Da Vinci's studio, I suspect you'd be the types who would say "Well, Leo, your pics are quite good, but (whisper) 'what kind of brushes are you using?'.

There is no lack of sterile work. Advertising product photography is perfect. Would most folks hang it on their wall and be entranced by it? Hardly. There is not one attempt to aim your arguments, graphically or verbally at anything remotely in the direction of the human or social heart or psyche. It is like reading an 800 page book on why accountancy is not boring - with powerpoint, flowcharts, pie sections and all. Give me a break. I have had the pleasure of judging many International competitions and have been appalled by some Austrian brickhead who took a whole team of people to the top of the

Round 1-Pro vs. Con. PRO
Round 2-Pro vs Con. CON
Round 3-Pro vs Con. CON
Round 4-Pro vs. Con. CON

READ FROM TOP TO BOTTOM

Seeing that numerous members have actually posted a round by round critique, I will do so.

Round one: Pro. Pro's picture was quite stunning: the backdrop blended smoothly with the darker elements of the Bean and his use of scale in particular made Con's photo a bit bland, though, as Maikuru pointed out, it successfully separates the scene and the viewers.

Round two: Pro's picture was quite startling and bold in colors…the side shot of the fungi and the bold interplay of colors makes it startling, but little of the fungi is given, and its character is left obscure….The greenery in the backdrop proves a bit distracting, along with the aforementioned haziness. A good picture, but a bit imperfect.

By contrast, Con's photo easily rivaled and showed a bit more deft use of light…The sky is left white and perhaps overexposed, but the scene is, to be brief, a stark and complicated one: the eye is besieged by the shadows of trees and adjoining bushes; there is a man with his back turned to the viewer, apparently pushing a cartwheel, and the viewer is left somewhat interested in the interior through the window, of apparently multitudes of bottles and arrangements of different colors, the signs, and so forth. The picture does not seem to truly conjure the sense of impressionism that Roy stated, but I can see how the picture may represent a fleeting moment captured forever by the camera lenses.

Round three: Con's picture of the cow in the dairy farm was….uninteresting, to be honest. While I can understand the brilliance of the colors, which Con specifically stated was an advantage of the dairy farm that he exploited by "boosting the colors", and the angle at which the photo was shopped, I do not find the subject interesting and in fact, the distorting of perception proves distracting from the cow's otherwise mildly surprising stare.

As for Pro, I do have to admit that it did surpass that of Con's. The image of the night cereus—unfolding appears to be somewhat like how Roy stated, taken at the moment: one can see that the flower is barely opening and the backlight and sunlight in the background, contrasted with the lighter shadows, create an interesting feeling for the viewer.

Round four: Pro's last picture was again a bit stale. While the sharp hue of the fount might prove interesting, it is contrasted with a bland background—a blurry beach with the sea, its incoming tides indistinctly marked across the shore. There could have been many ways to fix this, but as a layman with little to no understanding of the composites of photographer, I would have liked Pro to exploit the image of people, blurred and amorphous more, and balanced the photo as well as making the background more interesting (with the bikini girl that Roy mentioned, :), for example).

As for Roy's, I do have to admit that I agree with Pro: the exposure of the ground makes the picture stale, but the angle at which it was shot, as well as a few nice touches—the flying bird, the minute cross—save the round from being a tie.
Overall, Roy wins, though I do have to say that I was impressed by Pro's expertise. :)

Good job to the both of you.