Nigel,
It's funny that you are on Crete and instead of giving us pictures of the buildings of all the conquerors, you take pictures of your own son who could have been snapped on Brighton pier or Bournmouth, at far less cost! But what you have delivered is worth so much more than just summer snap shots. I find these pictures to be timeless. The appear to work together, so we do not just see Marcus, rather we feel we know him and he is a lot of youth that is long behind us and ahead of of our grandchildren. Here is a boy with good humor, poise and patience. This is ideal youth, happy, responsible and not harmed. You are lucky he stopped long enough for you to to pull this off!
Would you have gotten as good pictures by the White Cliffs of Dover instead of Crete? Perhaps not. It could well be that the distance from home increases the already strong bonding between father and son and that what you have here.
I must say that this is one of the best portrait series of a young man I have seen in a long time.
Asher
Firstly, Asher and Ken, as usual I appreciate your kind and encouraging words and graciousness.
What I have attempted to capture here is etheric and ephemeral (suitable adjectives coming from a recent holiday in ancient Greece). Yes of course you can take identical pictures elsewhere if you judge them by all the mechanistic, physical parameters of a photograph such as light, tone, contrast, focus, sharpness, and even composition, but what I have tried to convey here is mood. To me this is the hidden element in these shots which may not have been reproduced under other conditions or locations.
It is almost the ghost in the machine that breathes life into the pixels. Your observation rather elegantly ties in the subject matter of the pictures and their location in Crete, the seat of the Minoan civilisation and the home of the Minotaur, with the Theseus Paradox.
If you replace all the component parts, is it still the same ship? The same might be said of a photograph