On my day off I went to the Lighthouse and Steamer's Lane in Santa Cruz. This guy was getting out of the water on the other side of the cliff from Steamer's Lane and I snapped a few shots of him. I think people somehow know when I'm taking pictures of them because this guy was really far away but he turned and looked at me right after this picture. It was way too loud for him to hear the shutter, so I think that his spidey sense was just tingling.
I have pretty mixed feelings about this finished version of the picture. On one hand it turned out well with all my editing; it's artsy, soulful, angsty, etc. On the other hand, that's not really the atmosphere of the day. It was a beautiful day and everyone was having a good time. The black and white combined with the rule of thirds makes this surfer look much more solitary than he actually was, and makes the day seem much more somber than it actually was. So while I like the way it looks, I dislike how it's not really an accurate representation of what was going on.
May 24, 2007
Lone Surfer
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4 comments:
I feel as though you really bungled this one up Keenan. There is an utter lack of detail when it comes to the surfer's body. I can't tell if he's wearing a full body wet suit or if he is just naked and incredibly hairy. Black and white photography is powerful, but be careful to maintain detail in your editing process.
Yeah you're pretty right about all that. The problem wasn't really with the editing, it was an underexposed picture to begin with. I just tried to make the best of it by converting it to black and white and fooling with contrast and color temperature etc.. I don't much like the finished result either, but I'm curious to see what other people think of it.
Although I agree with MrJammin in that the surfer is not well done, I really like the texture of the sand, to me it is more interesting than the subject. I think you've got something good going here, but I would have picked the other surfing shot on your Flickr to show off. The colors and the water spray are amazing in that picture, and it really captures a dynamic moment.
Also, I believe that it's irrelevant in this situation that the picture doesn't accurately represent the day. This is obviously an artistic shot, so you can take some artistic license with it. To some extent, photography, and all of art, is about taking ordinary things and capturing them in just the right way so that they look really special.
i like that there isn't much detail to the surfer, and that you can't really tell what he looks like. i felt like it contributed to the overall mood of the shot; it conveys a sort of isolation, and, more than that, it makes the shot less about an individual and more about a place or the representation of a surfer in general.
that was a pretty botched up explanation of what i'm trying to say, but yeah. i like it.
-ian
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