Buddhist nun at the Temples at Angkor

The_Traveler · Apr 11, 2013

I am revisiting pictures that I never edited well before and trying a bit more now.

This was, unfortunately, taken in a too dark area for the lens I was using.

Mully · Apr 11, 2013

I like the shot just wish the hands were not cropped.

The_Traveler · Apr 11, 2013

Me too

I was young and foolish then

terri · Apr 11, 2013

The cropped hands and the focus issues are a shame - but it's still a good capture. Some motion and sense of story is still there. I can see why you like it.

Photographiend · Apr 12, 2013

Would you mind terribly if I just live vicariously through you?

I won't offer any critique you are experienced enough you already pin pointed everything I would notice and then some, but you still know despite all that it was worth posting and it is.

I just want to soak it in and imagine I was there. What an amazing experience that must have been. I am starting to understand your screen name.

HL45 · Apr 12, 2013

I don't know much about the culture, a Nun is not a Monk but could go to that level?

The artwork on the wall is quite intriguing.

The_Traveler · Apr 12, 2013

Photographiend said:
Would you mind terribly if I just live vicariously through you?

I won't offer any critique you are experienced enough you already pin pointed everything I would notice and then some, but you still know despite all that it was worth posting and it is.

I just want to soak it in and imagine I was there. What an amazing experience that must have been. I am starting to understand your screen name.

In response to this quite nice comment, I will post something I wrote in a PM to someone who asked about 'meaning' in pictures.
It is long but bear with me.
I have sent this for comment to a couple of people here who are fairly tolerant of my BS but here it is in the open.
Any suggestions for edits are welcome. (Ignore typos but point out bad syntax)

You want to take pictures with meaning.
There are, as I see it, at least four kinds of 'meaning'

the documentary sense where the photo tells you something or shows you something but the information really is all that escapes the frame. e.g. parts diagram for a dishwasher. The information may be useful, even vital, but the content generally touches only the intellect

Similarly, there is the kind of'meaning' where the content of the photo has such specific hold on the emotions of specific viewers or kinds of viewers that any technical or quality issues are essentially unseen. e.g. pictures of babies or grandchildren or pictures of places where singular things occurred to the viewer.Again, the meaning is tied so much to the viewer that the photo is more of a catalyst that works on only certain substrate.

There are 'pictures with meaning' where the content of the photo has general ramifications that the viewer can understand and respond to.The viewer sees the photo and reacts perhaps both mentally and emotionally to what he/she sees. e.g. The execution of a Viet CongGuerilla.http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/20...cong-guerilla/ The immediacy of the event as shown obviously has meaning, although the meaning is tied so much to the history of the viewer that the photo is again more of a catalyst than a container. These are hard to take because you have to be there and understand what you are seeing in time to catch it.

What we are usually are trying to create is the fourth kind, an image that by its content and its treatment becomes not just a picture but a frame through which many people can see a reality that affects them. The technical qualities of the image are not irrelevant in that they create the 'reality' but they should be so evocative that they are ignored by the viewer. The example that always pops into my mind when thinking of this is an old Kodak commercial that showed a set of puppies playing. The maker set out to pull the viewers into a reality that plays on commonalities among his potential viewing audience. The meaning is embedded in the subject and made real by the artist.

That being said, does that mean that setting up the situation or post-processing to build this meaning, to appeal to the audience, is that somehow cheating? It isn't any more cheating than what a sculptor does when he chisels away stone to reveal the form within that previously existed only in his/her minds eye.

(Note that I purposefully left out abstracts that aren't tied to some evocation of a real form; I see them as interesting sometimes but totally empty. I feel the same about most posed portraits.)

So how does a photographer go about doing this?

There are two basic intentions that must guide the photographer. First the content within the frame, everything,must be coherent with the intended meaning because the viewer sees it all, assumes it must be there because the photographer left it there and the viewer attempts to make a story.
Everything the photographer includes should be aimed at allowing the viewer to create a story. By story I don't mean it has to be a literal plotted story but merely some coherent vision of what he/she sees that is comforting in that the elements in the image go together.

and second, the management of the image, post-processing, must both support the intended meaning and not introduce any elements that grab attention from the main point.