This week SAR readers photos selection.

50 Responses

1. “Golden Beach”…very nice but was the girl’s waist Photoshoped? It looks incredibly thin.

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   1. Look at her legs; she IS thin!

      Also it seems that her belly area is bent forwards, this is why her waist looks even thinner. She seems normal…. for a russian model… :p

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   2. Thank you for your attention to my photo! Daria’s weight is 43 kg. She is very slim. I’m very happy to catch the moment of her jump! 🙂

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2. loving them, amazing skills. wish some would refrain from over-processing though but to each their own. the kuala lumpur & warsaw ones are my favs.

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3. Amazing selection ! One of the best week so far, in my opinion.
   Pierre Paqueton : “La Défense” is really nice, but I also like Toma Paul and Robert Collins’ ones. These are pictures I’d be glad to print and put on the wall.
   And, as it happens very often, Yuri’s picture is simply incredible !

   Knowing that one can achieve such result really encourage me to learn and improve. Thanks guys !

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4. Foggy Morning from Adam Kliczek is my favorite.

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   1. Thanks Neo NiGHTS. 🙂 You can read the history of this picture on my blog – it’s in Polish but there’s a Google Translator embedded, just clik on a flag in the upper right corner: http://zatrzymujeczas.pl/blog/zdjecie-dnia/205-z-kronik-jakuba-wedrowycza

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      1. Nice story behind it! I really like when photographers share the background behind their pictures!

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         1. I’m glad that you liked it. 🙂

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5. golden beach is HORRIBLY processed.. really horribly

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   1. obviously its not supposed to look natural…

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      1. Was it supposed to look ugly

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         1. No offence to the picture itself the composition and the feel are so dreamy and beautiful. I meant the colors are off

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            1. I think the composition is pretty bad too, for golden beach. She is not centred, she’s not off-centred enough for it to look deliberately off centred, and there#s no rule of thirds. Rules are made to be broken and I’m fully aware of it, in fact I think the 50/50 horizon line works well, but her position just looks COMPLETELY wrong when we consider where the sun is.

               “Cee Galluzzo‎Portrait of the President of Nasdaq, published by Fortune”

               This photograph reminds me of an actor stuck in a sony boot and someone pointed a camera roughly at said actor, kept it in automatic mode and then posted it on facebook “omg look who’s here!!” There’s zero skill required to take a photograph like that which is one of the reasons I dislike it. The other is that it’s simply uninteresting.

               I’ll get flamed for saying this but sometimes we have to look at our subject and think, is the subject attractive? Is the subject interesting? Is the subject important? Is the subject the ONLY reason our photograph is noticed?

               If you look at some of the greatest photographs that use light in the best way possible and you were to replace the subject with a boring egg, (yes, an egg), that photograph would (in a lot of cases) still look interesting. An important subject or a publicly desired figure shouldn’t be the only reason a photograph is loved by other photographers

            2. I meant to say booth and not boot

            3. Sorry, I was momentarily distracted by my own self importance. What a load of old pap………

            4. I look forward to seeing yours camera-club-chairman Bob!

            5. So, you seem like a good photographer. Show me your works?

            6. Hi Bob,

               The corporate portrait I took I lit with a gridded monolight. The subject was standing in front of glass (with the corporate logos etched into it), so glare had to be controlled. The art director required there be environmental Nasdaq branding (since I already have produced standard see less shots of her previously). There was a national broadcast (fast money) being set-up around us so this was one of the few options. Also, when shooting VIPs I only generally get them for about 5 minutes so I pre-set as much as possible. I would argue that it was not a photograph in which “zero skill” was required. The subject, the client and the editor at fortune were all happy with the result.

            7. Thanks for the description. it was obvious what it was, what you were doing and what the constraints must have been (we’ve been there). Maybe Chairman Bob will understand that real world shooting is far from ideal.

            8. Yes, there is often little time when doing client work to set-up an egg for testing. Thanks Pete.

6. Sony should make cameras that only shoots black and white, their colors are sooooo weird.

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   1. agreed! thats the only reason i sold my a7, the colors, are too cool, and not right

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      1. Sony has 8 different Camera calibration profiles imbedded into adobe LR & PS6! For Sony ARW (raw) images! But the default ‘Adobe Standard’ Camera calibration profile is applied automatically during import to LR and/or ACR! The Adobe Standard profile is the issue that causes the horrible color shifts that so many complain about! IT’S NOT A SONY PROBLEM IT’S AN ADOBE PROBLEM! You can easily set LR to apply any of the Sony ‘Camera Calibration Profiles” during RAW import! Try camparing the Sony ‘Camera Standard’, ‘Camera Neutral’ or ‘Camera Portrait’ profiles, that are in the LR ‘Camera Calibration’ list to the horrible ‘Adobe Standard’ profile and I bet you will be pleasantly surprised at the more natural color rendition. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to explain this to new sony shooters!

         Note: If you shoot Jpeg only you DO NOT have the ability to change or apply any camera color profiles in Adobe… Your stuck with whatever ‘creative style’ you chose to shoot in camera. Another strong reason to shoot RAW….

         For color critical work I use an Xrite ‘color checker passport’ which allows for creating custom camera color profiles in post.

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         1. The sony ones are pretty bad too. If you’re shooting portraits, you should be using a colour passport and making your own profiles

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            1. More hobbyist rhetoric.

            2. You apparently didn’t read my whole post above… Check the last paragraph…

      2. Wow, not magenta????

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   2. YES, indeed. Very very true. Not.

      ‘Weird’ is definite and it’s not an opinion. It means that something is clearly wrong, right? But, since Sony RAW files have very similar colours compared to others in RAW format, why blame Sony? Sell your A7, or whatever, I guess the community does not deserve people without proper observations like you.

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      1. Fair enough refillabe. They are weird to me since I don’t like to bother my self diving into profiles, and truely I have never liked my A7 skintones no matter what I do in PP.

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         1. So, get a Canikon SLR and shoot B&W if you don’t bother with profiles. Not hard at all huh?

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   3. Crack kills don’t it?

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7. Beboy photographies‎ – Composition, POV and the choice of the PP, he’s done a great job all over.
   Adam Kliczek‎ – Very well controlled exposure and the mood of the picture is WOW
   Yuri Afanasiev – Great capture and great mood, I wish it was silhouette though, colors are off and the PP made it too flat.
   Armen Demirdjian – Really impressed by his control of that exposure, not easy one.
   Toma Paul‎ – This is coooool, but IMHO Burj Khalifa should be either included or excluded from the composition, it’s position behind the other building is totally weird .
   Robert Collins – Great picture, sadly colors are off.
   Sortino‎ – Cool and new POV, out of the box :).
   Vedran Tolić – Obviously great control of studio lighting and light ratios, not a big fan of her expression though.
   Pierre Paqueton‎ – IMO he should have positioned himself more to the right, that would maximize the gap between Eiffel tower and the street lights and minimize the effect of their flare on the tower. that said I like his capture overall I can see it on a large print.

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   1. Regarding Yuri’s, “the colors are off” what? You are quite wrongly using some reference standard other than the image itself.

      Also, “too flat”. Relative to what? To what you would like? In this image, I enjoy what you call “flatness”, because not only does it aid the impression of unreality in a subtle way, it also gives it a pastel-like quality that is difficult to achieve in any photographic rendering, that indelibly adds to the sense of fiction, or unreality.

      You sound like a complete measurebator.

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      1. Actually, reading your comments, you sound like a complete tool, incapable of anything other than the sterile formulaic.

         Seriously, you might want to get a life.

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         1. Seriously, if you can’t find a factual, objective (not subjective) elaboration on why he couldn’t say it’s ‘too flat’ according to his opinion, you should never tell him to get a life.

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            1. Rubbish. He gave no basis for his assessments.

               “Too flat” and “off” for him personally? Who cares? How does that add to a dialogue or make anybody else’s life here better?

               My point referred to the entirety of his comments, which were all about HIS PERSONAL formulaic view. He is a narcissist extraordinaire–and an uninteresting one, at that.

            2. bla bla bla….

            3. And do you give any basis either? No. ‘Flatness’ is a matter of taste, you can’t do an absolute claim of it. This is different from expressing stupid and untrue statements. Different from statements like ‘Sony’s colours are so weird’.

               I personally find this guy (CanikonRule) to be quite annoying some times and I don’t care about his opinion anyways. But is that the reason to say that he should get a life for his opinion? No.

               You hate his Personal opinion? Counter it with yours (OK, you did that), but stop forcing him to follow your opinion by saying ‘Get a life’.

            4. Are you on crack? Flatness a matter of taste, no kidding–I was the one who illustrated that. And who except you said anything about stupid or untrue statements? Nobody, that is who.

               I never asked him/her to “follow my opinion”, as is easy to see. All I did was provide a counterpoint to his/her total blowhard absolutist statements: “too flat” and “off”. Maybe you should stop having a vicarious persecution complex, and get a life yourself.

            5. So which part in your argument elaborates your ‘Get a life’ stupidity then? I do not care about untrue statements or rhetorics such as ‘Are you on crack’ or ‘get a life yourself’. No, you get a life. You, not me.

               In one part you are saying that flatness is a matter of taste, and in other you are saying that someone’s flatness as a ‘total blowhard absolutist statement’. You are aware that flatness is not absolute and so does “too flat” and “off” right? So why is that you are saying these ridiculings?

         2. That was my opinion and from my point of view. If you don’t like it just move on mate.

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8. I’m someone who does not consider himself a “professional” photographer, but I have sold some original artistic works. I do not publish online. I enjoy the artistry of photographs, and only appreciate technical qualities insofar as they contribute to artistry.

   I love Yuri’s image. For me, it brings forth from my imagination the idea of a playful young alien, on a distant world under an alien star. Who knows what the liquid is, certainly not water. Is she walking on it? Where and how does she live? Is she poisonous? Is she an outcast? Which way is up? How big is her world? Does she know about aliens? How old is she? Does she live in the liquid or on the solid, or both? Is she in love?

   Yes, I’m sober, no I’m not on drugs. OK so I like it. YMMV

   Heck, I might buy a copy. Hey Yuri, do you sell these, and if so, how much for a file I could print at maybe 13×19 high quality? I would do Paypal for payment if that would work.

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9. Thank you all! It’s really great, that you mark my photos. The Dariya is really very beautiful. I’m was shooting her all the day time. The evening was bestowed to us unrealistic sunset. The Dariya was flutter like butterfly. She was run and barely touch the water. I’m only press the release button. In future I’m will publish something interesting. To be continued!

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   1. Hi Yuri, I wasn’t kidding about wanting to buy a printable file. Or, if that’s too much hassle, you can point me to a free one! Let me know.

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      1. Hi! It’s great! My contacts are on my website. Write. Discuss the details. I live in Moscow. 🙂 http://www.photoru.ru/page.php?vrub=contacts&lang=eng

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         1. Thanks Yuri.

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10. Thanks for including my photo in the list! 😀

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11. Golden beach and robin collins ones….bad assss is what that is.

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12. Thank you for including my picture this week! It’s truly an honor.

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