I don't know who was sneaking up on who! That is a good idea about lightening that water in the paint version. Maybe a lighter brown with more grays in it, to get some brightening and color contrast. I take liberties in paint that I don't in photos. Isn't that odd?
Thanks for coming by, glad you liked my pig, and a special thanks for a helpful suggestion.
Not sure about painting this digitally but others do it and they get interesting looking results Paula. I played with the image a bit. The two main draws to the image did not seem to stand out enough for me so I tried to remedy that. It still is a very busy scene though. My wife and I have collected some art works over many years. Two wildlife painters whose works we saw were a Ron Kingswood and a Morten Solberg. Both their styles changed over the years. Solberg painted in watercolour and at one point in his journey left large portions of the painting blank with edges of the paint bleeding into the blank areas. Kingswood started out with high realism then went for a more abstract style something like that of Solberg. Recent works I have seen from these artists have drifted away from those forms but who knows where they may end up in the future.
Anyway, my play is below.
Andrew
Believe it or not but I had not even seen the pig until someone else mentioned it.
Talk about selective viewing.
I was so in focus together with the alligator and looking in his direction, that the pig blended in the background, as a trunk behind the reeds or grasses.
In fact, when the pig was mentioned, I still had to go looking for it, and again I zoomed in directly in the direction that the alligator is facing, wondering if I had mistaken that tree trunk for a tree trunk while it was in fact a small and very wet piglet in grave mortal danger.
This is for me a very clear illustration of the fact that once you have a certain mindset and way of looking, it is hard to get unglued from that point-of-view.
Andrew's intervention makes both animals stand out more. Way more.
But I am not certain whether I prefer that. I like to be fooled occasionally.
Roel
Hello Petrochemist,
I am glad that you found us, at least...
Being in the OLY forum is a matter of tradition, that we carry over from 15 years in that location on the old DP Review forums.
With DPR closing down, we needed to scramble and find a lifeboat before the ship went down.
Our main intention at this stage, was to keep the community of our regulars together and provide a safe temporary haven.
We may change or move this forum to another appropriate spot within the DPRevived structure, once we have it figured out better.
We are coming to terms with the change, and also a new layout (we sorely miss "Threaded View" for optimal organisation of our C&C venture.
We'll get there, but it may take a while.
In that meantime, we thought it best to keep the "temporary haven" in the equivalent of its former location.
I hope this explains the dilemma we were facing and the choice we had to make.
Roel
I always appreciate being shown examples of suggestions. You seem to have used some equivalent of a dodge and burn approach to help lift Pig and Gator from the muck and mire of Honey Island swamp. The pig in particular benefits from this. These critters were well camouflaged for swamp life. I enjoyed looking at the galleries of the two artists you referenced. My love of photography has always been intermingled with (and often overshadowed by ) my love of art. I tend to take liberties in photography that some photographers would object to. My initial plan on the digital paint version is along the lines of Solberg's wolf, where some of the background is disappeared into the canvas. I want the both reveal the critters and also show how well they blend into their environment, a tricky endeavor. Thank you for taking the time to work on this with me!
My goal, I think, lies somewhere between you and Andrew if that's possible. I want the pig camouflaged enough to surprise a viewer but not so much that he is never found. When I shot this (from an unsteady boat) I initially missed the gator as I'd been tracking the pig, but was pleasantly surprised when they nicely moved into view together. The idea fredk offered about altering the color of the water a bit sounds promising, and Andrew did a bit of that too.
I have a version with the two looking at each other but unfortunate the alligator is so thoroughly submerged that he can't be identified as a gator unless you saw him before he went under. Animals never seem to follow our instructions about posing.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for seeking out the hidden pig.
I like this treatment very much, so I studied the scene for suggestions I could make. I think the LHS is a bit distracting with the sharper OOF objects, so I tried applying some horizontal blur over that region - what do you think?
David
The Begging Puppy Nebula
I was sitting in the garden one fall day a few years ago, admiring the steam rising from my coffee cup. In the background is an OOF crabapple tree, with leaves of varying color.
David
For me, and for this series, I think the texture from the overlapping views is important.
That is oh so creative. I spotted the pup right away, hiding beneath and among the colorful bokeh in yellows and oranges. Still trying to make out the methodology (double/ multiple exposure? Stacked images in an editor? Special processing in camera or computer?) It doesn't really matter in terms of critique but I'm a curious sort and I don't feel knowledgeable enough about your kind of photography to offer as much as I sometimes do in terms of critique. I do like the repetition of curves shapes in the pup part, and the containment of the bright colors in the non-pup part, making them complementary halves of the same whole. It has a 2010 Space Odyssey vibe (that tells you how old I am). Thanks for sharing, and are you the same David Wright who shared the unusual color work on the Old C&C section?
[quote="@RoelHendrickx"]
Not A Phoenix, But...
For the last image in the old forum, and simultaneously the first one here, I picked an older animal portrait.
The cassowary is among the strangest birds.
It is not a mythical phoenix, rising from the flames and its own ashes.
But it does look like an animal that appears to have survived an extinction.
Especially if you look at the fierce head and the mighty legs and claws, they are as close to a dinosaur as you will get in a live animal.
Ha. These pretty looking things are dangerous. They can kill people (and dogs) who get too close.
What I like here is the strong diagonal line from the body with the eye placed right on that line. It is crossed by the second line -the bill to the horny bit on the head. You can't miss considering the eye rather than just the extravagant colours. This is a bird where it pays to keep a close watch on that eye.
[quote="@WhyNot"]
[quote="@MikePDX"]
Reflecting Uncertainty
Photography in many ways seems unsuited to the abstract, unless like Moholy-Nagy one skips the camera part – with digital I guess that is creating the image from the PP software! … Better perhaps is to explore where modern art started with exploring the idea of the flat field … would be interesting but again probably resting mostly on the PP … This picture is too recognizable – a good picture but not really abstract … I'll follow your work here as it progresses but not sure abstract is where photography needs or can to go ….
Now is this a proper critique??!! inquiry? ....
Sure, that's a proper critique Why Not. I'd disagree with you but that OK. I'd argue that if the photographer sees patterns, colours, shapes that might otherwise be considered abstract and if the photographer' capture of those patterns brings this to our attention, that's valid in my book. The photographer is "seeing" and sharing that insight, that we might otherwise have missed, with us. I like photography that makes me see.
[quote="@JimKasson"]
A NYC street scene
I prefer not go into detail about how I made this image here; it tends to dominate the discussion. I will say that the captures were made from a moving car.
Love it. Of course, it is impossible to look at without thinking "Nighthawks." People framed in warm colours that emerge from the dark. An oasis in the late night streets. Movement has been created for the figure on the left by the repeating blue vertical lines. He is moving into the doorway and so the building. The seated figures on the right ar static and identifiably male and female. They face each other and we suggest some level of relationship as contrasted with the solitary figure approaching. Perhaps the three know each other, perhaps they don't. There is a suggestion of tension here.
Lots more could be said about this image.
Thanks for sharing, Mike. I thought the feral pigs were adorable in their ugliness. The locals hate them and turn as many into sausage as possible. They are descended from the pigs DeSoto and his band brought from Spain for portable food, but when the Spanish were dispatched the pigs were left behind. The natives thought the pigs were nasty and didn't want to keep them. They are strewn all over the South in the areas their ancestors were brought to.
Thanks, Mike. In this series I'm trying to get some ambiguity into the images, so that people will be motived to make up stories to describe to themselves what's going on.
