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Red Chairs, Red Door, Red Sign

Chris Calohan

Well-known member
This image, at least for me, is more about moving the eye from right to left solely through the use of color...well, then there is the crop. I've made two suggestions here, neither of which I will make preference to, hoping of course, the viewer and critic does this for me.

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Chris Calohan​
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
The second one or even a bit broader to the left. I feel that if the red chair is an element, it should not be cut by the frame.

Or, if you can, broader bottom, left and right. That would include the front chair feet, the right hand chair and the plant. And, maybe, change the hue of the sign and door to be closer to the one of the chairs. Orange does not go that well with purple.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The second one or even a bit broader to the left. I feel that if the red chair is an element, it should not be cut by the frame.

Or, if you can, broader bottom, left and right. That would include the front chair feet, the right hand chair and the plant. And, maybe, change the hue of the sign and door to be closer to the one of the chairs. Orange does not go that well with purple.

Jerome,

Design-wise, we do indeed prefer see the whole of an element, like a cloud, over "nearly-all" of it. Sometimes showing about 50% of a face or mechanical object makes an even better design as deconstruction is more decisive and definite.

Asher
 
Design-wise, we do indeed prefer see the whole of an element, like a cloud, over "nearly-all" of it. Sometimes showing about 50% of a face or mechanical object makes an even better design as deconstruction is more decisive and definite.

Hi Asher,

While I agree (I'll explain why below*), in this case the cropping leaves nothing as the main subject/object of attraction. I agree with Jerome that (especially on the left side) the crop doesn't 'help', whatever the goal was.

* When I took my exams, after 3.5 years of following the formal education for becoming a licenced professional photographer in 1978 (a requirement at those days), I had to 'defend' my submitted images for a panel of state certified examiners.

One of the assignments I could choose from to submit, was an advertizing worthy image of an electronic LED calculator. The skill trick was in nailiing both the exposure of the overall calculator scene, as well as the luminous LED (light EMITTING display), in a single exposure, (to make matters worse) ON FILM (no Photoshop back then).

I (of course) got the differential exposure issue right (balancing Flash exposure for the scene with the self exposing luminous digits in a darkened environment), and I chose to compose a diagonal (=dynamic) scene with only the technical calculator uncropped, but all the other props (drawing pen, goniometric triangle, ruler, and circle drawing tool) subtly cropped at the edges of the image. This cropping raised a few questions at the exam ...

They accepted my explanation though, since there was one single item, the main subject, left intact.

The moral of the story, what is the subject/sensation that the image attempts to get across? That's what IMO is missing in Chris' image, as presented.

Cheers,
Bart
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Asher,

While I agree (I'll explain why below*), in this case the cropping leaves nothing as the main subject/object of attraction. I agree with Jerome that (especially on the left side) the crop doesn't 'help', whatever the goal was.

* When I took my exams, after 3.5 years of following the formal education for becoming a licenced professional photographer in 1978 (a requirement at those days), I had to 'defend' my submitted images for a panel of state certified examiners.

Bart,

Those were the days! Imagine some Star-Trek device for $2700, the semi pro model, one could be a surgeon! It's unthinkable but really that's what's happened to photography. In the process, a lot of folk are self-educated, but really can miss out on some finer approaches.

I (of course) got the differential exposure issue right (balancing Flash exposure for the scene with the self exposing luminous digits in a darkened environment), and I chose to compose a diagonal (=dynamic) scene with only the technical calculator uncropped, but all the other props (drawing pen, goniometric triangle, ruler, and circle drawing tool) subtly cropped at the edges of the image.

I wonder how many Canon 5D owners could do this well?

...............They accepted my explanation though, since there was one single item, the main subject, left intact.

The moral of the story, what is the subject/sensation that the image attempts to get across? That's what IMO is missing in Chris' image, as presented.


Chris,,

If you only used the lower half of the images here, for example, then we'd be looking at a somewhat haphazard repeating pattern of red shapes. It would be more impact-full and magnetic. At that point, we can start to imagine other things or the rhythm and dystonia of that rhythm can recruit some experience far away from "red chairs".

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Chris Calohan: Red Chairs, Red Door Red sign

So that's where extensive enough cropping takes away the need for a main subject. Instead we'd get an atmosphere, an argument, dissonance or other invitation for our imagination to create some new reality there.

However, the intermediate zones between complete objects and disassembled pieces, with moods or emotionalism, is not so easy to work magic with, as in this case with so many incomplete very, very red chairs! So you give us a great challenge. Still, I'd just imagine this done in paint by a French Impressionist and be quite happy!


Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
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Chris Calohan: Untitled

Wonderful, Chris! This works better. It's coherent and united. Theres's the sense of a community about the place. We can populate the image with from our libraries of characters we bring with us. when a picture allows that, it more only has impact right now but allows it to be up to date whenever we return with our new ideas. So it's good and deserves printing. We could, of course fuss further in so many ways, according to taste, and for example, "consider whether the background elements really need to be so sharp", but the picture is already impressive and has life and its own voice. So it's essentially done!

Now, for a different and daring experience, (dealing more with patterns and staccato representations of pieces), look at this picture with the top half of the table top sliced off. Of course, it's not what you have had in mind. It's something utterly new. Still, I think it's interesting to explore. Does this speak to you? Is that appealing to you at all?

If it's, "Yes", or even just, "........perhaps", then this leads to another idea. This is why I feel that today with digital photography, image making can end with the initial exposure, but can also really start de novo from just sitting at the computer screen, with an unbiased mind and starting from scratch, with one's harvest from that day.

In the first case, your picture of the red chairs is about the people you did not show and you generously allow us to bring along. They sit, chat, a friend arrives late perhaps, discussion changes..... and so on. We easily create the play and the mood for the day each time we revisit.

In the alternate possibility, there are no people brought here, just the structure beneath our society. We're looking at something more mysterious and that's where it's daring.

Asher
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
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Untitled: Chris Calohan​

I see that you changed the door colour. I prefer that, but I feel now that there is not enough door in that story to balance the chairs. Maybe the second crop you presented, maybe extended to the right as it is now (keeping the whole right hand chair) and just a bit extended to the left to keep the front middle chair whole and exclude the left hand chair? We don't really need the left hand chair if we have the door, the eye will jump in diagonal between doors and chairs.

I am not sure whether you can do that, however, as the third picture here is not a crop but a different take as is apparent from the bokeh on the fence.

I should also say that I am wondering why you are posting that exercise. You said you gave courses at some point in your life. Are you trying to test us?
 

Chris Calohan

Well-known member
I spent twenty years trying to get high school kids through a wide range of photographic experieneces. This included simple pinhole and holga type cameras, 35mm, 2 1/4 - 6x7, 4x5 and a myriad of alternative processes - salt, cyanotype, ziatype, PT/PD and albumen. Whenever the Nikon D40's were released, I was able to purchase a classroom set and also began teaching digital combined with Photoshop. Mind you, in most cases I was teaching all the above at the same time with beginning, intermediate and advanced students in the same classroom.

Long and short of it was in this type of teaching environment, I never had time for myself. When summers came around, I was at one workshop or another learning how to be a better teacher and ever so often, such as the case with several I did at the Photographer's Formulary and at the Santa Fe workshops, I got to dabble a bit for just me with some rather stellar photographers - Al Weber, David Vestal, Christopher James, etc., but for the most part, my time for me as a learning photographer simply didn't exist.

I retired this year and for the most part have spent my time relearning techniques either I'd forgotten about or in the case of digital, didn't know. As a teacher, other than the D40 experience, I only taught B&W. Color chemistry wasn't allowed in the classroom. You could learn how to make bombs in chemistry but not a Cibachrome in photography - go figure. Funny thing is, with my alt pro classes, my students told me they did more hands-on chemistry lab with me than they did in chemistry class. They also learned more about writing in my classes than they ever did in their English classes...another go figure, but quite another story altogether.

Anyway, I am learning color, and how color works differently in composition than B&W does. As well, and this is probably the biggest thing, I am divesting myself of looking at 20 years - about 3,000 students of photography which ranged from really-really creative to really, really bad. Some kids just never got it...but their counselors insisted it was an art class, and who couldn't do art?

So, Jerome, I am going back to school, so to speak. What better place to learn than from my peers, from those who've mastered only what I scratched the surface of in attempting to get students onward and upward and many of these young people went on to graduate from schools like the Savannah College of Art & Design, University of Mass at Wesleylan with Christopher James, RISD, New Hampshire Institute of Art, UCLA, Stanford, etc. etc. etc. Recently, I learned one of my girls landed a job with Vogue. She was incredibly good. One of my students started her own business as a wedding photographer and was so good, I had her shoot my daughter's wedding.

In the photo below, just above and slightly to the left of the observer, the two large photographs belong to a young man who graduated last year and got a full ride to Rhode Island School of Art & Design. The young man won major prizes in the form of scholarships from his sophomore year on. Just to the right of the observer you can see a B&W Pt/PD print of a sunflower. This young lady won a near full ride to Florida State University in art. I know I had a great deal of influence on these young people, but at one time last year, I seriously began to question whether I was a better teacher than an artist...now there's a revelation that will set you back a step or two, if you really think about it...and I did.

Hence my stepping into this arena and testing all the theory I put forth to my students on myself. Ironically, some of it even makes sense...hahahahaha. It's kind of like this: I have read extensively on the mechanics of flying an airplane. I can do the calculations to get me from my house to just about anywhere and I could probably fly at night, but based on all this nice book-learned information, would you go flying with me? Not me, not on a bet. Anyway, I want to fly.

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Chris Calohan

Well-known member
The other artwork shown belonged to another art teacher. The student who did the image to the right of the Diner graduates this year and is going to Ringling for animation. The finger wagger is at Savannah this year. She started out in Fashion Marketing but this spring switched to Photography...good girl.
 
The girl that is going to Florida State is your daughter? That is the same sunflower from previous post, correct? Congratulations on that job well done.
James
 

Chris Calohan

Well-known member
It is...forgot I posted it earlier. She spent the weekend here. She's not actually my daughter but a homeless girl my wife and I took in so she could finish her senior year and qualify for oodles of scholarships..she may have been homeless and living from hand to mouth, but she is an incredibly smart young lady.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Hence my stepping into this arena and testing all the theory I put forth to my students on myself. Ironically, some of it even makes sense...hahahahaha. It's kind of like this: I have read extensively on the mechanics of flying an airplane. I can do the calculations to get me from my house to just about anywhere and I could probably fly at night, but based on all this nice book-learned information, would you go flying with me? Not me, not on a bet. Anyway, I want to fly.


Then, excuse me if I am blunt, why aren't you trying to fly? I see your pictures, and they don't belong to someone who has been teaching photography for 20 years. At present, you are just testing the airplane, make sure the rudder moves, the flaps are getting out and the engine is starting, but you are not in the air. You are like a piano teacher who would still be practicing chords and asking whether they sound nice, the touch on the keys is delicate enough, the notes are played in the right succession and the piano is well tuned. It sounds nice, but it is not music.

Show us a picture of something you care about, please.
 

Chris Calohan

Well-known member
I wasn't testing this forum's viewers per se, only a set of visual perceptions I wanted to confirm for myself about eye movement and going against the natural order of western thinking: right to left, top to bottom.

In this image, I went from bottom to top, right to left. Where I failed was in making a distinct statement about the role of the chairs, or about the setting itself.

In my teaching, I used this format for critique and discussion: PICS. Meaning Person, Interraction, Composition, Symbolism. Bart van der wolf brought me to this realization and while there is enough techincal merit to the shot, the lack of a main character doesn't allow the story to happen...and thus goes my journey: not practicing what I preached.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
the lack of a main character doesn't allow the story to happen...and thus goes my journey: not practicing what I preached.

One can do perfectly well without a story at all. Just means that the balance and energy in the patterning of the elements works to command our attention and then to have us linger. it's a mistake to think one needs a story and main character to have photograph succeed.

Also, the age-old accepted idea on how we read images has been challenged. I'd not think of those eastern and western rules but instead of the gestalt of the entire image.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
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Exit: Chris Calohan​


I'm with this one and very much interested. Showing part of a scene allows us to bring our own imagination to the small world you have loaned us us here. I would be prepared to drive to an exhibit or which this was the only one illustrated in the advertisement. but I would want to see how you might take this further.


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Hat-Man-Do Chris Calohan​


This fellow, however, doesn't get my interest. It could be an even better image but I'm distracted. Perhaps the individual colors fight for attention and B&W would bring out the underlying totality of the man and his purpose. I'm not sure here, but I so think this could come out to be quire charming in B&W.



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Allure of the Seas; Chris Calohan​



Chris,

You've challenged us greatly, putting together incompatible images!

This last one is lit only on the right and there's no way that the mass of detail on the left is justified or interesting because of this. Also, we have too much experience of wonderful sunset skies to rejoice in seeing this one that doesn't even reach "postcard pretty". Still, if this had neighbors in a sequence, it might be perfect.

Now I've been brutally honest to the point of being foolish, but I thin you are testing us and if we accept this picture without protest, then we would have failed you and ourselves.

Asher
 

Chris Calohan

Well-known member
I could have added this image, a 3 sec night exposure on the same vessel as it traveled at 15.4 knots. I have 4 others but not sure if you didn't know the ship, they would make mush sense but I'll include them anyway. These were all submitted to Royal Caribbean's cruise contest..who knows, ya know?

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In the Quiet of the Night​

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Down on the Boardwalk​

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Looking Down at Central Park​

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Up and Down Art​
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Chris,

I have returned to this older thread because I remember being perplexed as there seems such a lot of richness in the pictures, even causing me some jealousy at the wonders of architecture, but in the end satisfaction of not fully realized.

Why?

Should these pictures be in monochrome. Are the colors needed. It seems to me that shapes and textures and play of light are the actors here and color perhaps is holding back the potential of the works.

Have you happened to explore these images in B&W?

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I agree!

Having returned to this thread a number of times, the collection of cruise ship pictures work powerfully together and the color? That does belong, as it provides the atmosphere of Carnival Cruises!

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Chris,

I likely missed this thread when it was new, but was tickled back onto it by Asher's recent bump.

These are all wondrous shots, but this is especially miraculous to me:

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Up and Down Art​

Thanks so much.

Best regards,

Doug
 
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