Monochrome man

Tell a *story*, convey an *idea*. So tired of the lighting gimmick. Anytime your subject is something other than light and people compliment "the light" the image fails.

"Good Light" can be, and often is, as as much a distraction as "bad light".

The main problem with this image is that it is literal, and, as Gary notes, lacks 'drama'.

You can light it, process it, fiddle in a million different ways, but at the end of the day, it's just a harvester being a harvester. It doesn't say anything about what a harvester intrinsically is, what it means to the individual, to society. It doesn't convey anything intrinsic about it's form, nor really it's function. There is no deconstruction here. It is just what it is.

Light, processing, contrast, color, black and white, all of that is to convey the *idea*. If there's nothing there other than the literal, then there's nothing else you can do to convey anything more than just the literal. This is why people prefer the color version, because it is the most absolute representation of the literal subject. We don't have to seek as deeply to inteprite what it is we're looking at.

This isn't to say it's a bad image, but in the context of being an image that stands as the art object, does not succeed.
 

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