My Photo Art

Right, it has taken me 10 minutes to find a way to post this here, so I hope its worth the effort.

I call this piece "The power of beard"

The meaning here is quite layered and I think quite powerful. There are multiple levels in which I think it can effect you. I'll post more of my artwork here later.

 

This piece doesn't really speak to me. Your frames are unequally sized and the elements joining them are unbalanced. The unevenness could work, but the framing and lighting are inconsistent and produce a distracting rather than synergistic asymmetry. In the shots of the gentleman on the left, the harsh and direct lighting produce undesired shadows and emphasize minor skin imperfections; combined with the awkward posing, this produces overall unflattering photos of your subject.

 

It's as I secretly feared.
Being essentially bald on my face, I'll more than likely only attract senior Catholic ladies with a bit of a masochistic streak in them.

 

Hi SF
I've had a look at and a think about your work. I have also read MSD's comments.

I was interested to see what it would look like if some of them were put into operation, so I put it into Photoshop and did two alternative versions. Have I got your permission to post them here with my thoughts? Note: if you don't want that, then my attitude is that I had taken a liberty, and you have my apologies.

Best Wishes

 

yeah, sure go ahead and post them!

I had the flu on the bottom left shot which I suspect is the real reason I looked like shit though!

 

Hi SF

Thanks for the permission ... here's the post I was holding in readiness

I've had a look at and a think about your work. I have also read MSD's comments.

I was interested to see what it would look like if some of them were put into operation.

What if I balance the frames a bit?

What if I balance the elements a bit? Not much I could do in a short time, but I flipped the nun around.



Then into black and while to remove some non relevant colour harmony-clashes.



The questions I've got for you are
"To what extend do the changes clear the ground to highlight your meanings"
"To what extend do they detract from clashes which might have been intentional?"

Concerning the portraits themselves, yup, they could be 'done better', and positioned differently ... but, for now, I am looking at this as a statement of artistic intent, rather than of artistic completion.
Similarly, it would be dang interesting to get a nun to sit on a bike so that her upper body and direction of gaze matched that of the model. Plenty of other things you could do, but for me the most important thing will always be 'to what extent is all this enhancing your direction - the meanings you know you are wanting to convey'

For example ... and here I 'pull the poem apart' ... and I get 'Beard = look great, attractive, sexual, maybe part of a world of shared youth and physicality' 'No Beard = less actively sexual, more sticks and less carrots'. Now, let's imagine that I am 'right' ... IE that my interpretation is in the ballpark of your intent, then .. see that nun? I turned her around. this way round, then symmetry and balance is enhanced to the extent that BOTH women are 'facing' YOU ... but what if your initial 'nun faces away' was to ass the additional feature of 'alienation' ... alone ness "Without my beard, even the NUN buggers off into the sunset." Then my horizontal flip of the nun might have enhanced visual harmony, but the cost would be too high. Conversely ... and here I'll put my own strong;y-felt opinion ... putting it in colour adds a level of disharmony, but IMO it risks OBSCURING the more Meaningful Clashes of content. If, however, you re-took the pictures of yourself, but in the garden, the bottom picture against a grass lawn, and the top picture of you with trees in the background, then colour could, perhaps return without loss of unity.

These are intended to be nothing more than a mass of perhapses, for the purpose of 'inciting' more perhapses.

All the best and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to explore like this.

 

Like it, turning the nun round does make it look better!

Whenever I look at it I'm only really paying attention to Rachel Bilson though to be honest. She looks well up for it. Well, thats the power of the beard...