Chris, you are underestimating yourself. There are some really great shots in your gallery. I have had a quick look at these images and sometimes I am really impressed.
If there might be something to criticise,it might be consistancy. Some really high quality images and some which are IMHO a little below your standards. But the top ones, like #15 and the ones with those people on the beach do compensate and make it a fine portfolio.
There is a good reason to be proud of this achievement.!
Leen
Chris, I thoroughly enjoyed both your photos and your ‘creations’. You should be very proud of your gallery.
I have only had time to view the large thumbs so far but I am impressed. I really like #29. I am looking forward to having the time to see the full size images.
—
Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/ wrote in message
It is another month so we have another artist Chris Rankin
Chris, first off…love the Bio ! I enjoy your method of writing…so, imo opinion..that is another talent you can add to your list of creative can-dos. Great stuff! Oh, the Jodi-nater was cool …still flattered…to an extent. 😉
I love your gallery ! Fab !
My favorites;
5,13,20,23,25,30 and 36.
Thank You for sharing. It was delicious 🙂
Hi Chris, You have wonderful photos!
The lightning pictures in your pbase album are amazing! That middle one packed a lot of power. Jane
Chris, this is wonderful! I was trying to write the numbers of my preferred pictures, but there were just too many of them!
The bio is nice as well.
Congratulations!
Ray
Chris,
Methinks you protest too much! Your images are very good indeed. The ones of architectural details are fascinating and, well I was very impressed with your work.
Dick
Chris,
The introduction text is very inviting and fun to read and that is what I think your images are too, full of fun and wit.
I seem to detect a development upward from beginning to end. Most of my favorites are as of image 20.
Amongst those that impressed me were 5, 12, 21, 22 (definitely), 28 …. and finally 36 despite that we cannot see her feet.
Congratulations on a fine choice of images.
Robert
Chris,
I have enjoyed the work and wit you put into your challenge entries, so I am glad Grant talked you into giving us a "super-sized" helping of both!!
Well done. My pick for the blue ribbon is #12.
Thanks, and congratulations.
Byron
I suppose someone will be counting votes now (hopefully not in Florida). So here are my favourites: 7, 12, 15, 24, 29, 30 and 36. My absolute favourite is # 15, runner up is # 36.
Leen
Chris —
A well deserved honor — I always look forward to seeing what you come up with for the Challenge. I enjoyed seeing this new selection of material, too. Have to go with the family on the beach and the Baptist church as my favorites — great work!
Bob Warren
You know, I really like all of them but looking back at my favorites ( listed in an earlier post )…it’s obvious to me why I chose them. Seems i have picked those that most reflect who I am. The ones I could most identify with in a personal way. Obviously there is a bit more to it than that. Composition is always the key in my view of things as well. Gotta have it.
Anyways, just wanted to mention this. Wondering if ‘attachments’ to our personal life and experiences and who we are really do play a major role in ‘our favorites’. For me it seems to. but that’s me…always the over sensitive type.
Leen,
Could you tell us (me) wat you see in # 15 to make it your favorite of all? I can detect a certain autumny kind of melancholy but am not sure if that is what makes it a special picture for you.
Robert
There are several reasons for me to choose #15.
I love the golden colour of the light that makes this image almost monochrome. Too often people are using too bright colours; this is a nice exception.
The composition is nice, lots of triangles, the way one lookes at this images starts at bottom right, leading the eye into the image and due to the vertical lines the eyes are returning again.
The atmosphere of emptiness and solitude, quietness usually appeals to me.
The way we look at an image is coloured by our past experiences and the way we were taught how to look at any image. These experiences are a mixture of our cultural upbringing and personal experiences. Next to that we tend to analyse images the way we were taught in art classes.
Analysis of a photo by me is often pretty unbiased by me personal likes and dislikes; I have been taught that way as I do quite some photo critiques. Nevertheless, about half a year ago I couldnot critique a photo by one of my colleagues as it provoked too powerful emotions.
This image shows the author had some peace of mind when capturing this moment; probably this element in it appeals to me.
Leen
Thanks everyone for your comments. Coming from you guys it means alot. I had to go out of town unexpectedly and just got back and this was a nice thing to come back to.
When Grant asked me to do this I went thru my images and photos and picked ones that weren’t necessarily ones that I thought were my best but were ones that had some meaning to me or that I thought would have some meaning to others. Robert was close in that they semi go in order, the first image was my first Challenge entry ( thanks Grant!) and some of the photos were with my old point and shoot when I was first starting to get intreasted in photography again but they’re mixed in with ones from my Rebel. Some were favorites from the Challenges and some just used techniques or things that at the time were new to me. I think that I just wanted to show a little of everything, warts and all, as a way of showimg who I am. I’m still figuring out what I shoot well and even what I want to shoot. Your comments help.
Thanks again.
CR
Leen,
Re: #15
I took this shot on the first cold morning of this past winter. It was shot at one of our County parks and there was no other person there. I spent the morning shooting this house and the grounds without any distractions. It was nice.
When I first shot this I envisioned it as black and white. I liked the texture and tones that the shadows were making and the morning light was diffused by the early mist. I set the WB to shade to get a warmer tone and that’s what made the shot. After I looked at the full size version I just left it alone because of the warm glow. The texture and tone were still there but the color captured the feel.
Here’s a link to a larger version and some of the rest of the set: <
http://www.pbase.com/image/24778847>
CR
This part of the Challenge, the "artist of the month" is a very nice way to become a better photographer. It forces you to have an extremely critical look at the images you made and thus it makes you aware of your best shots and after reconsidering ones selection several times, you become aware of why some shots work and some shots don’t.
I had the same experience when trying to prepare submissions for qualifications. Maybe it might be a good idea to set the number of images in the "AotM" to a fixed number. This limit would force the artist to reconsider which images to submit and to have that extra critical look that makes you a better photographer afterwards.
I know it isn’t a competition, it is showing to your internet family, but nevertheless most people will consider preparing the submission for the AotM like a kind of qualifying moment. After all, you show your children to a worldwide audience.
In my experience, after undergoing a qualifiation, the quality of my images suddenly rose to a new and higher level. I had this experience several times and would like to share this opportunity with all of you. After all, I owe a great deal of my latest qualification to the help of this wonderful community.
Anyone agrees or disagrees with me?
Leen
I’ve never had my work on display before so this was a new experiance for me. After having done it now and after readings Leen’s post, I would probably do it a little differently next time as far as the images I chose. I know if I had been entering a judged competition I would have choosen different images.
Grant gave me a between limit for the number of images and I choose the hgher number which was probably too much of me but there are others that could easily exceed that number with ease. But if my choice had been limited to a smaller number I don’t know that the quality of images would have been any better, at least in my case, because I didn’t look at it as showing off my best work but more as a cross-section.
CR
"which was probably too much of me" <<<
Chris,
You have been around a long time now and we could not get too much of you 🙂 Glad to see your gallery up there.
Pete
Leen,
I know what you are saying, I went through that anxiety called AotM and you want to show your best and I believe I am speaking for all who have been asked to be AotM.
With limiting the number of entries to say 20 images you are forced to really think why you want to have exactly these 20 displayed. On the other hand this is as you say more of a family and I am not sure if the competitive edge would work here.
Robert
Chris,
The full size image is super. I love that milling marks in the wood of the porch.
Also thoroughly enjoyed your ‘Moulding Plane’ shots as well. Makes you appreciate craftsmanship of days gone by.
Dick
Dick,
I know what you mean about appreciating the craftsmanship. It’s hard enough with modern tools and when I look at what was accomplished with tools like those… even the level of craftsmanship that went into making some of these tools was superb.
CR
Chris,
I finally had a chance to take time and view your gallery and your other site. I like that you picked a cross-section of your work. I have some favourites of your photographs as well and number #15 tops my list. Since we are listing ones we like I also picked #13, 16, 19, 20, 27, 28, 30, 31 and 35. . .
I’ve enjoyed your challenge entries and your sense of humour.
Great work !
beth
Thanks Beth! I appreciate your comments. It’s been intresting to see which ones people like. I think one of the hardest hings to do when picking out images to display is to try and figure out what will appeal to people. While there have been many that people have liked in common there have also been those that have only appealed to a few. Like Jodi and Leen said earlier, we base our preferances on our life’s experiances whether we’ve had technical training or just because an image touches something inside us. I’m glad I don’t have to figure it out to make a living. 🙂
CR
how dare this thread fall back so far !
I just had to get another look 🙂
Well heck, Chris, I just scanned down through all the messages and found that, with the exception of your #30 picture, 95% of my Favorites didn’t show up on anyone else’s list. So either I’m splat as a judge of photography (a very good possibility), or maybe I just march to a different drummer. 🙂
But, for the record, here are my choices: 6, 16, 17, 30, 33.
It was fun reminiscing over the old Challenge pictures, too. Thanks for sharing a bit of the past with a bit of the new.
Marilyn
Marilyn,
Thanks for the comments. I think the world would be a very boring place if there weren’t a few of us keeping a different beat. Glad you liked #33.
CR
adding 35 to my list. not sure if i missed it the first time or whether or not my funk mood lately has put a different spin on my tastes.
Back to the top for Chris! I noticed that 2 of the 3 "ocean shots" have some type of edge masking, is this coincidence or something that you often do with this type of shot? Also on #16 it appears you aligned the photo by the height of the poles and not the horizon. Was this done as an artistic statement or by chance? I enjoyed your photos immensely and was just curious.
—
Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/ wrote in message
It is another month so we have another artist Chris Rankin is the man
of the
month please trip on over and read his bio visit his gallery and then
head
over to his home page.
http://home.cogeco.ca/~challenge/ArtistinResidence.html.
Welcome on board Chris.
Grant
James,
The edges masking that was used in the beach photos was also used in # 4. They are from Jodi’s famous Spedia Layers Styles set. It’s just a coincedence that two of the 3 happened to be beach photos.You can see aother examples here:
<
http://www.pbase.com/wyczar/spedia_filters>
I had two versions of 16 ( of course the waves were differnt), one with the horizon where you expect it to be, but this one looked better to me with the pilings as the focal point, and the horizon curving off over the sea – to me it gave a sense of the vastness of the ocean beyond.
CR
I really liked #16, I just wanted your feedback on it. Thanks.
—
Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview http://www.myeyesviewstudio.com/ wrote in message
I had two versions of 16 ( of course the waves were differnt), one
with the horizon where you expect it to be, but this one looked better to me with the pilings as the focal point, and the horizon curving off over the sea – to me it gave a sense of the vastness of the ocean beyond.
CR
Hey, Chris, very nice work. I haven’t been around much, so just got a chance to look at your images. (House painting and a new hobby got in my way this spring/summer.) Very interesting reading the background you gave–and you’re a good storyteller on the intro page. 🙂 It was especially funny reading about your semi-haphazard way of creating Challenge entries–that’s pretty much the way mine go too.
My faves are 33, 31, 29, 25, 21, 20, 13, 10, 9 (nice, subtle effect), 2.
Oh, and what’s in the light fixture in 28?
Lou,
Thanks for the comments.I thought 9 had a three diminsional effect with the way they were standing so I just applied a blur to everything except the three kids in front,
It’s not a light fixture. It’s the view down a hall towards another hallway that the sun is shining down, What you’re seeing is the chair rail moulding on the walls. I did a levels adjustment and then applied the tile filter over the whole thing.
CR
