"I Can't Stop..." by

This critique was written as part of the competition.

While I am a photographer, I have not worked in a dark room for a very long time due to working with digital images. However, I would still love to address some of the more basic technical elements that occur in camera and the interpretation / concept portion in this review.

I love classic black and white photography. I tend to notice values and shapes in a very different; I hesitate to say, but more pure way than when I am looking at color photographs. They tend to invoke a slightly surrealistic perspective of our color saturated world that always seems fresh to me as an observer.

Your photo is great in terms of exposure, but lacks impact. There is a nice balance of lighter spaces, mid-tone grays, and deeper valued shadows throughout the space which makes it feel full and textured. Squaring off the image does this photo well by reinforcing your composition. Your main subject, the statue sits off center, placing the face in the upper right hand intersection of the imaginary grid. However, one reason I think your image looks flat is because there is hardly any depth of field (DOF) in the work. There is not enough distinction between your subject and the background. One way of making this distinction greater in your camera is by opening the aperture more, making your f-stop smaller. The second problem is the angle in which you have taken the photo... Your main subject is half hidden in a shadow based on your relation to the sun, your light source. It would have been better to keep your relationship towards the statue but move 5 ft or so to the right of where this image was set up (and now thinking about it, closer to the angle where your second photograph in the series was taken). You can probably remedy this somewhat in the dark room using some dodge / burn techniques with your light projector. One other suggestion to help with composition would be to allow more of your main subject to fill up the frame. Bringing yourself and the camera closer, or zooming in to the statue would be ways of enlarging the main subject but would still allow you to see the surrounding environment.

As far as the bleeding techniques that you have used around the edges, I think the effect is really nice. It gives me the impression that the film is being burned up or melted. I imagine that doing this technique is a total hit and miss process. My recommendation would be to produce several drafts until you find one that has a really strong composition to it.

I think your overall concept is there, but improving your execution would make it clearer. Your use of metaphor (a Roman / Grecian-esq looking statue hidden and surrounded by modern buildings) definitely works. And in some ways, I totally understand and agree with your conclusion. Especially here in Western society where there is a minimum emphasis on maintaining (or creating actually) long term cultural traditions. Here in the USA, most of our traditions came out of faith based practices with lots and lots of history, of which many people are rejecting at this point. But due to the strong post modern movements occurring right now, there are trends that move through our culture but nothing that will stand long term. My Mother often said, “Our greatest contribution would be rock and roll and popular culture.” But even these have particular trends that define what those terms mean. Even our longest and most celebrated traditions like Christmas are being questioned! That is sad to me, and not just because we have lost the understanding of what Christmas actually is, but also because the people in our culture are no longer unified in that understanding. And that is sad. We are so quick to move onto the next big thing that we find no value in history and tradition. I think people might claim that history is important to them, but if the traditions that back up the history have no value how are you going to remember the history? Anyways… I am getting all heated up. This disintegration is very much present in your developer techniques as well.

I definitely believe that this work touches on some pretty important themes. Further still I commend you for looking at those concepts and trying to put them on paper. There are a lot of little things that can be done to tighten up the composition and make your concept clearer but it is not a bad photo by any means.

Good work and happy holid- … Wait… Merry Christmas!

Matthew Palfenier