This post speaks to me, and what it says is “snotty, bitchy, unhelpful, and condescending.”
I don’t understand a lot of the negative comments on this thread. The only thing I think is clearly wrong with it is the kid’s jacket.
I like how the lady looks both genuinely concerned and detached. What does the kid really mean to her? To me? And so on. Makes me think.
-FrL-
I find the problem is that it’s very unclear what is inside the jacket. lobotomyboy63 said “We aren’t allowed to show the faces of anyone at the shelter,” so the photo has to work within that limitation. However, in my opinion, it would have been better without the jacket, and the baby’s back much more clearly visible.
There’s a rule of thumb for taking photos like this: “Zoom in as much as you can, then take a step forward.” Try cutting off the top and bottom to change it to landscape format; if I was doing it, I’d cut the bottom off right above her thumb, then go up 450 pixels from there to make it a 3x4 ratio. It’ll make the apparent graininess worse, but IMHO it’ll help the composition to lose the distractions of her hand, headband, and most of the jacket.
I don’t know. The headband is interesting to me, because it’s very mid-century. It suggests a photo taken in the 1950’s rather than 2008. Depending on what the photographer is trying to accomplish, however, I suppose that might muddy the waters.
For anyone with lingering doubts about the story behind the photo, here are all the pictures I posted of the event:
http://volunteerism.meetup.com/185/photos/316863/3506441/
The image is #35 of 47. Beware: the other 46 contain lots of photos with little evidence of artistry. Oh, and I only wrote the caption for the last one—my friend Jo captioned it a “great photo,” not me.
Perhaps someone can help me with technical information.
I have a Canon PowerShot A720IS. I had it set on superfine resolution and large image size because that records at 8Mb, which I assumed would be the sharpest resolution. Actually, the images come out at 4Mb for some reason. I was also shooting at “ISO 1600,” which I know with film would mean more grain, but I figured the large capture would counterbalance that.
I used to shoot a lot with a Nikon FM and a Minolta XG-700, so I understand things like stopping down for greater depth of field, faster shutter speeds to freeze action, and so on. But perhaps my film experience is causing me to do the wrong thing with digital.
I recently took a few pictures at work and the grain (when printed) was dismaying, and that was in prints that were only 4x6. An art teacher said I should have shot them with available light instead of flash—which seems counterintuitive to me. The camera was on a tripod maybe 8 feet away (flash is good to 12 feet). Did the ambient light fooled the meter?
Another thing I hadn’t known when I bought the camera a couple months ago: it has very limited f/stops. I just assumed it would go to f/16 or f/32, but it only goes from f/2.8 (4.8 tele) to f/8. It has a full range of shutter speeds (up to 1/2000 sec) but I think in certain modes it only goes up to 1/1000.
Maybe I’ll experiment with dialing down the ISO and image sizes.
I can see why your colleagues thought this was a great picture – because it is 100x better than most candid shots that are taken from much too far away and are usually posed.
I can’t really comment on the artistic value of it, but the vast majority of the population would be ecstatic to have taken this picture.
I stopped reading after the beginning of your explanation post, so here’s my uninformed viewpoint of it as a piece of art:
It makes me wonder about the context. It looks like something from a newspaper story, but I don’t know what kind: is it a reunion, is she meeting someone she’s adopting, is she comforting a stranger?
It’s interesting as an out-of-context image in a way that I kind of compare to Lichtenstein’s paintings.
My wife, who understands art, says its a pretty good picture. And she likes the graininess, though I don’t know why.
-FrL-
During college I lived with a boyfriend who had a darkroom in his house. I took full advantage of it so I know how hard it is to capture a candid photo - people are far too self-conscious. So, kudos to you for a lovely photo. I bet the shelter and (maybe) the Mom of the child would love to have copies.
Since all my serious photography was done in pre-digital days I can’t advise you on the technical points. However, now that you can see how gratifying it is, maybe you will keep practicing on those candid shots. I enjoyed that type of photo much more than the posed pics. The only advice I can give is to discipline yourself to frame the picture in the camera - think about it whenever you look through the viewfinder. Just learning to do that improved the quality of my photos considerably. Pretend that photoshop doesn’t exist while shooting.
Anyway, nice catch! Keep those pictures coming.
I think it would’ve looked better in black and white. The graininess of the color is distracting.
Other than that, it’s a touching photo.
@Emmy, Talon, Frylock, Little Cloud: Thanks for the compliments! I haven’t taken pics in years and using a digital camera has been a mixed blessing. Still, nice to have a few turn out well and once I get my digital head right, who knows?
@Little Cloud: I know what you mean about framing in camera. Back in the 35mm days, I didn’t have access to a color darkroom so I grew to think this way. One thing about this photo in particular however: I wish I hadn’t cut off her finger. It isn’t a crop…that’s the full image. But trying to be surreptitious etc. is bound to create some issues like that.
@Talon: I didn’t post details in the OP because I wanted as much objectivity as possible. If people even knew I took it, they might react like, “lobotomyboy63 took that? We love him!” and transfer that love to a crappy photo. Or if they hate my guts they might diss something good.
In a later post, after some opinions were on the table I covered this a bit. I was volunteering with some people at a shelter. This woman had taken a shine to one of the babies. I was mostly there documenting and you can see the rest of the (not particularly artistic) batch here:
http://volunteerism.meetup.com/185/photos/
Again, if I’d given away info in the OP maybe ppl would have looked at it and said “Awwwww, how sweet, helping the babies at the shelter!” If you look back you’ll see that wasn’t everybody’s reaction before they knew.
And I value those comments b/c IMO there is some really great art that requires no introduction or explanation or background…it just speaks universally somehow. Moving down a notch, there is art which is very good but you have to know some background.
What I’ve read in this board suggests to me that this basically a good image but it has some flaws in composition and exposure. It doesn’t hit in my top two levels, but I like it in spite of these things. It’s all learning curve, you know?
And by the way, a random thought. The woman in the picture really is beautiful, IMO, and it’s interesting how people compared this to Angelina adopting a new kid etc.
IMO Angelina Jolie barely qualifies as pretty. That’s just my taste (or lack thereof?) in women. She and Brad had some high-profile adoptions, which I guess makes people think they’re crass, effectively buying whatever they want.
But I understand they have also given millions to charity. In all fairness we’ve gotta give props for that: it is possible to be beautiful on the inside as well as the outside.
A prettyish woman. A cuteish baby. It is what it is.
To each his own.