Had you called it a character study, then I would have commented
differently. You called it a portrait, and that had a great deal to do with
my response to it.
William Robb
----- Original Message -----
From: "AlunFoto"
Subject: Re: PESO - portrait of a young man
Christine,
I asked for brutal comments on this pic, but I'm afraid I will have to
return some brutality in my response this time.
You ask if there's not more to this teenager than his pimples. I take
that as a rhetoric way of saying that the presence of his pimples
keeps you from seeing him as anything else than pimply. I'm sorry, but
to me this just comes across as shallow.
Absence of pimples in a teenager's face has nothing to do with dignity
either in my book, I'm afraid. I would say to the contrary that
dignity very much goes hand in hand with honesty as to their presence.
And in that way, I think I do go about photographing people the way I
photograph landscapes. I have no objection to removing things in PS
such as intruding branches or straws, but I would seriously hesitate
to beautify a landscape by removing integral elements. In the case of
this teenager, I'm pretty sure he would think me screwed if I
presented him a portrait with his skin smoothened out to look like a
baby's butt. In the same way as I wouldn't try to straighten fluffy or
stray feathers in a bird portrait either.
Hope you do not take offence by this opinion, despite its rough
presentation. But it's veering away from the photo presented. Thanks
for sharing your sentiment on the photo. I do appreciate that,
Christine. It certainly got me thinking.
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
[email protected]
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
