Slobadan,
All my comments have been about photography and/or specific images in this thread, apart from my response to people attacking my comments about photography.

I'm not really interested in the mutual admiration society. "What a great image", "Very nice" etc.

If one isn't promoting one's own agenda, are you recommending one promotes another person's agenda, or are you recommending one should have no agenda at all?

White on white, Perth Fashion Festival

Fabienne@chadwicks

Canon 1Ds MK II, f/16 @ 1/125th

Hair client

Without agend there is only mindless confusion. It has taken me years to acqire an agend; for those years when I was without agenda I was lost, drifting in an ocean of this´n´thats, tossed on the swell from the passage of greater people who had agendas, agendas I could but guess and covet! Now, with agenda of my own I am complete and can create my own swell, swamping those lesser mortals who don´t even know they are without agenda. An agenda for everyone is what I have recently thought would make a very credible slogan. I am going to send this idea to the British Labour Party! Hey, I might even get a knighthood or an expense account out of it!

I will certainly be cheered in public, given time on national TV and, with luck, a seat at Wimbledon. All this, from a tiny agenda!

Rob C

Deleted

Comments should be about images, not personal in nature.

Language should similarly be moderate, for an open audience.

Everyone has been warned.

Michael

+1 Please!

Four images of non commercial value, though 4 images I like a great deal.

This was shot in Moscow at the end of 2009 during an ad shoot, in between sessions.

The main subject is one of our models taking a break, the gentlemen in the background are unknown, though probably security, probably not FSB (KGB). Across to the right of the park where we did most of the shooting was the FSB offices and though permitted the FSB attempted to stop us shooting, saying it was the FSB building and secuirty was at risk. You get a lot of that in Moscow, and just like the two men in the background wherever you go there is always someone in black within earshot.

(Don't take this is a knock on Russia or Moscow and I really liked the Russians. Tough culture, beautiful women, very direct and once you get past the perceived toughness, very warm and friendly.

Shot with Leica M-8, available light, 28mm lens, f whatever.

Click to view attachment

The next image was also between sessions for the same ad shoot (the following day). We rented an old Ukranian center and moved most of the furniture out, lit it with HMI's and slight fog machines for the ads.

The subjects were a group from a ballet school we "rented" and the little girls were great. Even between sessions they just kept dancing, so in between session I just kept shooting.

Leica M8, available light, 28mm lens, f 2.8

Click to view attachment

This next image, though different is also from last year, on a personal motion and still project about boxing. The two young boxers are real, shot in studio with a contax, p21+, F11 and flash.

Click to view attachment

This last image was shot a little over a year ago, on a lens test, a Hasselblad 110 F2 on a Contax P30, wide open, using window light.

Actually the original file got tosses as it was just a sharpness/focus test, but some some reason we had a screen shot of the image so I worked it in post.

Click to view attachment


JR

Great shots Rob and Anthony.

Love the feel in those last ones Russel.

Funny, I often first look at a picture , then read what is was about.
First thought was the decolleté gave me a French feel (I like) and the athmosphere late 70's - early 80's , photography that's hardly been seen nowadays. And then I read it was shot in the South of France early 80's.
Very inspirational. Miss that feel in pictures of today. Well I guess you cannot stop progress....

Kind regards,
Bart

Thanks for the kind words, guys - I suppose that it´s true that everything has become much `tougher´ in terms of image style today. But then, I suppose that the way you shoot pics is nothing more than a reflection of how you´d like your ideal world to look.

Apart from the problems associated with the commercial aspect of such photography, there is the underlying fear that if you are anyone other than one of the superstars of photography, you have to balance a lot of factors you consider to be outwith the remit of art but still too important to ignore. One such is client awareness of what else is going down in the same genre. What could shock client A looks too mild to client B, and so it goes, and it´s difficult to guess what´s what sometimes.

It sounds silly, but I have experienced the situation where a client as been very pleased with a pic only to change his mind about it later because his wife didn´t think it was nice. You can´t fight that, not can you factor it in. Helmut Newton or somebody like that would have just walked out... I needed the work.

James - I think the atmosphere in the ballet class is beautiful; almost worth the men in black just for that.

Rob C

Click to view attachmentThis is a couple of years old. Shot with a 1950s Rolleicord -the camera I take when I am on holiday- somewhere in southern France.

Hello,

Taken back in 1991 at Bland Bay in Northland New Zealand at night using moon light.

Nikon FA using Velvia and exposed onto Polaroid SX70 in the dark room.

Cheers

Simon

I coulda sworn it was the head on a beer closeup... very cool and very interesting!

Gidday,

Actually I was holding a beer when I took the shot.

I was camping with friends in a paddock at the time.

Cheers

Simon

Doing some work in NY recently I decided to do a few final setups on way to airport [I had a 6pm flight]. Did some shots in Grand Central, in the Chrysler Building, returned some faulty goods with quite some difficulty and then ended up just off 34th St.
These are from the final location and were taken after I'd done the planned set up with some other dancers that I'd had in mind all week.
Yet this last minute unplanned add on shoot turned out to be my favourite of entire trip.

Love the first one - the swirl of her skirt and the way she's placed her leg makes it look like she's sitting on a giant ball in the middle of the fountain. OTOH, maybe she is.

I trust she got extra pay for the second image! When I was property manager for a resort in Ontario, if one of my workers fell off a roof (due to a lack of a safety harness), the fines started at around $250,000 and that's before any civil action...

Mike.

Cheers!

I like the concept in this image, nice work : )

Shot in my student days 2006 for 3rd year designer 'Emma' @ Swan Tafe, WA

Canon 1D, f/8 @ 1/160th

Is this a threat to Vincent Van G that I see? Very nice and an interesting technique too.

Rob C

I too thought, when seeing the thumbnail, that is was a sitting shot, but of the two I prefer the b/w. In fact, were you to have a bash at converting the second one from colour to b/w you would be getting into the same ballgame (if you cared to, that is) as some very famous fashion blokes with their Eiffel Towers and New York roof lines. Certainly, you´d lose the impact of the colours against the buildings, perhaps why you kept it in colour in the first place. Fear would have precluded that second shot in my case - I have no head for heights, quite apart from caring about the model´s welfare! You wouldn´t even get me UP the bleedin´ Eiffel!

Best wishes - Rob C

Cheers, but shssh! You're giving away my trade secrets and hiding the plumbing was a bitch.

Actually she was paying me! She wanted some promo shots for her belly dancing.
The super of the building nearly had a heart attack when he saw her cavorting on the parapet edge 31 floors up.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the complement. I did a series of shots like this around this time in 1991.

I jokingly called it my Claude Monet phase.

Sorry to read about the loss of your wife.

Cheers

Simon

I think I tried B+W initially, but the colours worked better.

I really hate heights too, yet on this trip I even ended up being suspended in the air for one shot. My coping strategy with heights is to not look down.
I certainly don't have Joe MacNally's no fear of heights. He's the second guy from the top...



...and that's the very wobbly antennae on top of the Empire State Building.




.

Do you have a bigger file of this pic I'd love to see up close : )

James,
I like it. It's a bit of a snapshot. However, if you'd been assigned to shoot this ballet school, I'm sure you'd have produced an even better shot. You've captured the movement wonderfully, although there are a few minor criticisms, such as the girl's arm covering her face. The composition is also a bit of a jumble. But not lets not be negative. You've captured the essence.

Nope, that was a shot from Joe's blog, full article and more insane photos here. But you do get to see the photo he took from antenna.

Thanks for the sympathy - sort of very bitter sweet ironic that I´m getting a show in April when she had been urging me for years to get off my ass and try... well, she won´t be neglected when it happens, that I have promised her.

But, on your shot - if you still have all the originals of the series, you could do great things with them with today´s possibilities.

Ciao - Rob C

Dear God! I feel ill just looking. Never in a month of Sundays, even if my life depended on it, which it would: I´d lose it.

Rob C

Heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing and the reminder to appreciate NOW. I texted my girl after reading this.
Sorry for your loss.

Hello Rob,

Here is another image from my Monet phase in life.

Cheers

Simon

Some great work being shown lately! I particularly like the girl and marionette, as well as, the b/w of the gal on the roof in NYC. Here's something I've been working on for over a month, it's a poster that goes on press next week, aimed at the summer car cruise market. The cars are quite well known in the Detroit area, the Silver Bullet was actually a stealth experimental car for Chrysler and raced Woodward Avenue as a test track! What do you think? Jim
Click to view attachment

Personally, I always loved Cadillac breasts.

Rob C

I know that there used to be quite a lot of manipulated Polaroid work around some years ago - the only Polaroid material I had was a back for Hasselblad and one of those plastic SX-something(?) cameras that I had to buy when a client demanded Polaroids of a location scouting I was going to do. I didn´t like using the back for the ´blad at all and afer the first lot I didn´t. An expensive mistake for me, buying it. That resulted in my never experimenting as you did, and the feeling that what I would have had available was ever going to be too little for any impact. Just shows you how time changes things and is certainly something that I think digital post work could open up to great new things, as you are finding. I like that sort of effect; keep at it, but is any Polaroid stuff available today for you to start once more with new ideas?

Rob C

Thanks, but hey, Captain Hook, I didn´t mean to depress anybody, but yes, now is important. Trouble is, even though you can be quite demonstrative during life, when a huge part of it goes, you can start to ask yourself whether what you did was enough. This might simply be part of the sudden awareness of the fragility of everything one took to be for ever, it might just be one of those thoughts that come uninvited and have no constructive purpose whatsoever.

For what it´s worth - I never was a religious person in the traditional religion sort of meaning of that; but, since she died, I have had so many experiences and odd things happen to and for me that I have no doubts at all that death is certainly not the ending of anything other than the chemicals. I have no doubt that there is something we can conveniently label a soul, another dimension which was always with us but usually ignored because of the overwhelming reality of the physical. Frankly, though it should be easy for me to dismiss this as delusion, I can´t, because my personal evidence has been too strong to ignore. I have no intention of going public with any of this - it is too personal to me and I doubt that it would make any difference to anyone else because I think I would have been more than a little skeptical had this come from anyone other than myself and only now, based on what I have experienced personally, can I accept it either.

It truly is a wonderful gift, life.

Rob C

Actually, "heartbreaking" for me usually coincides with "inspiring". So thanks.
I can relate to the other stuff you said.

But yes, back to appreciating the photos being shown here for me.

Hhhhhmmmmm..............

We now know that the matter of the physical universe is made up of photons, little packets of light energy which when colliding with each other form the virtually infinite number of protons, neutrons and electrons which in various combinations make up everything in our physical world.

In essence we can now accurately say that all the matter of the physical universe, our selves included is actually light slowed down.

Einstein said, “if we were to use 100% of our brains capacity we would no longer need our bodies and we would become pure energy"

Consciousness is a form of energy that can be expressed by our interactions in the world of matter through acts of love, compassion and kindness etc. but it cannot be measured, weighed or identified under the intense neutron beams of a neutron microscope, because it exists outside the confines of the physical universe.

Einstein espoused "Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed" this leaves the question, once our bodies have fulfilled their purpose and gone the way of the world, the vessel of our consciousness which has always been Omni present must continue in some form as it is not bound by physical laws.

Just thinking out loud

Which, I think, is what makes some sites more interesting than others.

Don´t stop thinking - it´s nice where you´re going.

Rob C

Fantastic I really enjoy your photos in the large format thread, esp. when you show some of the setup shots or when you explain how you accomplished your shot.

is this image a mix of composites ?

Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC
30D

Mike, It's a combination of 7 different elements, each car, the buildings, the surface, the sky, and the manhole cover. I think the number of layers at one time reached 90 or so. A creative director buddy of mine thinks I should change the design, lose the type at the top and bring the profiles out of a tone. I guess I'll give it a go but for the market I'm aiming this at I think it works well. The vehicles were shot in the studio and the location has been altered considerably to make it more interesting. Glad you like it! By the way, is your shot a reflection or is it a composite? Jim

loads of layers, for sure! the image is very rich, and everything blends together nicely. the only criticism that I would have is the font of the text at the top of the image, for some reason or another it isn't my favorite.

My image is not a composite, and its not quite a reflection either. well, maybe it is a reflection depending on your definition. anyways, it is a panned shot out the window of a moving vehicle. the smears of green might be caused from the reflection on the glass, I'm not quite sure.

Part of yesterdays business. Canon 1DsMkIII, 17-40 near sunset.

Beautiful work, Craig.

Mike.

Deleted

Recent liquid shots.

5D II

[quote name='brentward' date='Jun 14 2009, 06:07 PM' post='291336']
Recent liquid shots.

5D II




Beeeeutyfulll!

Rob C

Agreed - particularly the first. Forgive my ignorance, but how the hell did you do it?

Jeremy