Thanks for looking. Please share this post with others you feel will enjoy it too. If you’re interested, this is what my photography life looks like right now.
Hunting for beauty and balance, camera in hand
Thanks for looking. Please share this post with others you feel will enjoy it too. If you’re interested, this is what my photography life looks like right now.
35hunter 
Very nice one!
Thank you Frank. Joining in with the experimenting with posting single shots with no reference to the camera made. It’s enlightening to realise a shot I took years ago (six in this case!) stands up with what I’m making today.
Time and gear… the least important stuff
I do feel foolish sometimes that my “portfolio” of images made with my Nikon Coolpix in 2011/12 is very similar and holds up very favourably with the stuff I feel is my best these days. I’m still not sure whether this is good (I found my style and have adapted to maintain it whatever the camera) or bad (I haven’t had a new idea in six years)… I think theres a new post or two in there!
Good you have found a style and stuck to it, definitely. One day I’ll talk about the crap I did 10 years ago… nothing to do with my current photography.
But life’s just a time we spend looking for ourselves..
Frank are you familiar with Stieglitz and his “equivalents” photographs/theory? Your last line reminded me of them…
Strong, yet somehow, mmm, poetic.
I have done/tried this, but never so successfully.
Thank you William for your kind comments. I’m a sucker for a close up of a dead (or dying) flower.
Looked intently for a long time; finally realized – the clever reversal of the dictum that “darks advance, lights recede” is striking. And the delicacy and detail of the whites.
William I’m very flattered and pleased that the photograph has inspired such looking and thinking, thank you. I love how with these dandelions, you can take a picture one second, then a gust of wind blows the next and all the seeds are gone… That fragility is a reminder of many things we think we have in life and maybe take for granted…
those silvery tones… lovely work!
Thank you for looking and commenting. “Silvery tones” is a lovely phrase!
“equivalents”…. you, and your clouds 😉
One of my favorite negatives to work with (in the darkroom) was one I made over 5 years ago. So time is shouldn’t be the yardstick with which we measure our successes. However, we should equally not be held back by our limited ‘successes’… too esoteric? 🙂
I’m not a huge fan of shooting wide open, but do appreciate a nicely balanced image when I see one. In the context of “equivalents” it works as an abstract (just shapes and tones) It also works on a literal level. That is a beautifully captured image of a delicate and fleeting moment of nature, and your witness to it.
#justsaying
I remember a saying I picked up years ago – “you’re only as good as your last record”, so it was probably from the NME, who were always keen on the next big thing and quick to celebrate when one of their former darlings released something mediocre.
I guess a better saying would be we’re only as good as our best image, whether that was taken 15 minutes ago or 15 years ago.
Thanks for the feedback on this photo. I’m very pleased that you got the layers, and the praise is very much appreciated coming from you.
Pretty much everything I photograph means or represents something more than just whatever object it is.
What William said! (Better than I ever could) Lovely photo, Dan.
Thank you! Much appreciated.
Marginally more interesting than the grey tone image of the twisted wire around a wooden post, this still leaves me dissatisfied and underwhelmed. I’ve never been much taken with soft grey tone pictures against stronger black and white images, and on a laptop screen they look positively wishy washy. There seems to me to be no connection between the seed head and the uninspiring vague background either. Also I question the composition. You say you haven’t had a new idea in six years, why do you think that is, Dan? I’ve enjoyed some of your past, mostly polychrome, pictures but the recent stuff has left me cold. It lacks impact and I can’t grasp the point of a lot of it. Are you being led by “likes” on whatever social media sites you post your images on, do you think? Because in isolation, I’m finding them rather meaningless…
Adrian, thanks for your thoughts.
I would say the background is deliberately muted, and simply about bands of colour, or rather bands of grey. I have found that Rothko’s paintings are a huge influence, but it’s not something I really remember at the time of shooting, just viewing photographs afterwards. So no there was deliberately no direct connection between the dandelion head and the background, they were/are meant to be a contrast to each other, each one emphasising the impact of the other.
I didn’t say I haven’t had a new idea in six years, just I find my favourite photographs from six years ago or even ten or twelve years ago, aren’t much different in basic terms to what I shoot now. I just think I know how to get what I want more directly these days, it’s not reliant on a happy accident once in a while when the camera’s Program mode by chance coincided with precisely how I wanted the image to look.
I don’t know the word “polychrome” so looked it up. Seems it refers to a statue or sculpture or piece of architecture painted in many colours. I’m not sure what this means and what photos of mine you’re referring to? Do you just mean “colour photographs”?
The question about “likes” made me laugh. You obviously missed my post a couple of days ago – https://35hunter.wordpress.com/2018/04/01/social-media-the-last-goodnight/
“I’m giving up on my last remaining social media outposts – Instagram, Google+ and Twitter – for two simple reasons.
1. I’m not contributing anything meaningful to them.
2. I’m not gaining anything meaningful from them.”
So no, I am not motivated by getting “likes” etc as I don’t post images anywhere to get them.
I think a photograph should be strong enough in isolation, but maybe some work better as part of a series, with a title (of the series, and/or each photograph) that can lead the viewer down a path of more meaning.
We can’t please all the people, all the time!
“… in isolation, I’m finding them rather meaningless…”
Well, de gustibus, etc., wot?
For myself, it is the sheer high density, the specific gravity of emotional and philosophical freight in this and the other cited image that arrested attention. The composition here – well; the picked details, the sinuosity of the dandelion strands and fibers, post-life now wanly moved only by breeze, yet still holding the germ of new anima and growth out of death. And that in an arrangement of swirling light against turgid dark; the flaunting of rule – that one must never place a principle subject dead center, and the gleeful skating away from it. A very refreshing violation, that.
As to the question of angling for votes or likes or camp followers or sycophants or toadies or maybe advertising revenue, why, here, in this obscure snuggery in a very small corner of the Internet, why, it took me a few months of searching among the shoals and oceans of commonplace neon detritus to simply find it; I catch no smell of desperation for approval here. I find the rich and fecund aroma of art.
William, a thousand thank yous for your follow up comment and defence of the photograph. I’m delighted you get it.
This part especially – “post-life now wanly moved only by breeze, yet still holding the germ of new anima and growth out of death” – is a huge element to nearly all of my photographs. Nature consistently reclaiming and regenerating. To me it’s obvious from photographing a half naked seed head, I guess not to some.
Completely spot on with not “angling for votes” and so on, yes of course this seems a bizarre question when I’m a tiny blog amidst a not much larger community of blogs, and have withdrawn entirely now from social media. Again, thanks for understanding this!
Your vocabulary and way with word is as expansive as it is memorable, “obscure snuggery” is especially lovely, and describes a place I enjoy being in many aspects of my life!
Again, thank you William, your presence here is treasured.
Oh sorry Dan, I clicked ‘like’… because I do. While many images are not to everyone’s taste, this image I would be happy to have on my wall, somewhat larger admittedly. Damn it, I also marginally commented as well!
Thanks Martin, for the glowing compliment.
(Yeh I’m not a fan of the whole “like” phenomenon, so I’m glad you commented too.)