Chrysanthemum

[jcdeboever]

Hey, I noticed quite a few flowers have been converted to B&W ... It is good for you broaden your photographic spectrum. ^5

I only convert what feels or looks realistic to me. Certain things move me, normally prior to taking them. It's driven by the surrounding circumstances I suppose.

 

[otherprof]

i'm confused.... you are too smart for me. I will just do it like the idiot that I am. I thought these were good. Every f**** time I try to do something, someone one here says it's wrong. I have not a clue other than not posting anything on here because it confused the crap out of me. I am seriously considering not posting here anymore. It is not productive in my artistic journey.

I like the chrysanthemum photo, and hope you will continue to post here. I had a friend who became a very good and recognized wood sculptor. He told me this story, which gave me a thought I have voiced here and other places many times. When he was young, he went to a show with his teacher, from the Sculptor's Alliance. There were lots of sales, but his teacher did not sell a single work. My friend expressed his wonder and even anger at this, since he recognized his teacher's work to be superior to what was being sold. His teacher gently replied to him, "That's why they make vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, Jerry." He went on to say that if you go to a show with crap and it doesn't sell, you have to take crap home, and that is bad. But if you go to a show with good stuff and it doesn't sell, you get to take good stuff home, and that's not so bad." I think they may be contradictory thoughts, in a way, but I think there is wisdom in both.

 

[Gary A.]

BTW- For $25 an hour I'd coach you ... Minimum two hours a week, one hour upfront deposit.

 

[jcdeboever]

i'm confused.... you are too smart for me. I will just do it like the idiot that I am. I thought these were good. Every f**** time I try to do something, someone one here says it's wrong. I have not a clue other than not posting anything on here because it confused the crap out of me. I am seriously considering not posting here anymore. It is not productive in my artistic journey.

I like the chrysanthemum photo, and hope you will continue to post here. I had a friend who became a very good and recognized wood sculptor. He told me this story, which gave me a thought I have voiced here and other places many times. When he was young, he went to a show with his teacher, from the Sculptor's Alliance. There were lots of sales, but his teacher did not sell a single work. My friend expressed his wonder and even anger at this, since he recognized his teacher's work to be superior to what was being sold. His teacher gently replied to him, "That's why they make vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, Jerry." He went on to say that if you go to a show with crap and it doesn't sell, you have to take crap home, and that is bad. But if you go to a show with good stuff and it doesn't sell, you get to take good stuff home, and that's not so bad." I think they may be contradictory thoughts, in a way, but I think there is wisdom in both.

Random frustration bud. There is a lot of wisdom in what he said.

 

[jcdeboever]

BTW- For $25 an hour I'd coach you ... Minimum two hours a week, one hour upfront deposit.

Well, if I get a divorce I will take you up on that. My wife apologized finally.

 

[Tim Tucker]

My apologies, I was meaning to help and not frustrate! Perhaps I don't always communicate my thoughts too well in the language that I use.

There is nothing wrong in what you do, only other avenues that you can explore. The avenue I was exploring was really the nature of human vision, that the perception of black and white is really only the darkest and lightest tones presented to the eye, and how you can play with this to add depth to a 'black' background.

 

[jcdeboever]

My apologies, I was meaning to help and not frustrate! Perhaps I don't always communicate my thoughts too well in the language that I use.

There is nothing wrong in what you do, only other avenues that you can explore. The avenue I was exploring was really the nature of human vision, that the perception of black and white is really only the darkest and lightest tones presented to the eye, and how you can play with this to add depth to a 'black' background.

No worries Tim, I was having a bad day. I don't use the same software. Your feedback is fine but difficult to digest at times as your knowledge is so vast. I just have to sit and eat slowly.

 

[Th0r4z1n3]

I feel ya man. Every time I post something on here somebody has something negative to say about it... no matter how good I think it is. It usually gets to me at first, but once I take time to digest it, and get over my hurt feelings, I usually realize they did have some wisdom in their words (even if they did come off a bit harsh lol). It just pushes me to try harder.

Love the image btw.

i'm confused.... you are too smart for me. I will just do it like the idiot that I am. I thought these were good. Every f**** time I try to do something, someone one here says it's wrong. I have not a clue other than not posting anything on here because it confused the crap out of me. I am seriously considering not posting here anymore. It is not productive in my artistic journey.

 

[kdthomas]

I for one tend to like deep, dark, soul-sucking, midnight-in-a-coal-mine, RGB-zero blacks or retina-sizzling, nuclear-fireball, full-on clipped whites in a background. But that's just me.

As for the image .. I like it! It might be crowding the fame a little bit. But hey! You can add RGB-zero padding with no prob! Look fwd to seeing more, JC

 

[Tim Tucker]

I for one tend to like deep, dark, soul-sucking, midnight-in-a-coal-mine, RGB-zero blacks or retina-sizzling, nuclear-fireball, full-on clipped whites in a background. But that's just me.

As for the image .. I like it! It might be crowding the fame a little bit. But hey! You can add RGB-zero padding with no prob! Look fwd to seeing more, JC

Purely for the sake of discussion and exploring a different perspective and absolutely not as a 'right or wrong' argument...

White and black are the extreme ends of your available scale of tones. By pushing everything to the ends of the scale you remove all the variations, the texture. So you could display white against black. But that would defeat the aim of the image which is to show the texture of the flower. So you want to keep the flower within your scale of tones so it shows that texture, doesn't reduce it to nothing at either end of the scale.
Now you may say that you're showing the texture by contrasting it against no texture. But visually it doesn't always work this way because of the ambiguous nature of featureless black. It's difficult to make it look natural.

If I got this right then in the image below, which has been reduced to featureless colour, you should clearly interpret as being a circle in front of a background. You don't really see it as being a hole in a piece of card:

However if I change the background to pure black, and do nothing else, then it becomes ambiguous, you could interpret it as being a circle on a background or you could just as easily see it as looking through a dark tube at a background. Both visual interpretations are possible and the visual clues as to which is in front of which are contained entirely in the transition between the two, which in the case of an abrupt transition is a very small area and can be ambiguous. It's this visual ambiguity, that if not careful then the background can be seen as floating (can be either in front or behind) that I was talking about and not pure black itself. (N.B. Zero RGB black is just the base colour of your screen and will be different shades on different monitors. Turn you monitor off and look at the screen, not a soul-sucking black any more? Why? What is the visual effect that makes it so when you switch it on when you can only add light?) :

 

[kdthomas]

@Tim Tucker ... Okay I can see your point ... As far as the transitions go, if the edge of circle was a little soft in focus at some point on its outline, that would clue us in -- perhaps subconsciously -- as to what was in front of what.

And you're saying that having some tiny amount of texture, even at the very edge of perceptibility, gives us that same kind of subconscious clue, is that right?

 

[jcdeboever]

@Tim Tucker ... Okay I can see your point ... As far as the transitions go, if the edge of circle was a little soft in focus at some point on its outline, that would clue us in -- perhaps subconsciously -- as to what was in front of what.

And you're saying that having some tiny amount of texture, even at the very edge of perceptibility, gives us that same kind of subconscious clue, is that right?

I noticed with the textured gray background, the focused object can be at max sharpness and it provides a little more 3D effect and appears more natural, like it is not just floating in space.