I wanted to learn to make holliday pictures.

[skibeerr]

About five years ago I joined a course of about ten sundaymornings at the local Fotoclub. My first encounter with things beyond Program. And now I am kind of stuck. Owning gear is not enough, there should be progres in my "work".
So I was thinking of you, yes you, to become a mentor. Look at my pictures and give your honest critique. Maybe even start an openminded discussion.

What I feel until now is that the foto's I make do not appeal to people and are only appreciated by me and those close to me because of emotional value. So in general you could say I want my foto's to have a added value.

These days I wil ad more to flickr, so pick anyone you want to discus for better or for worse.

Take care,
Wim

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Do not confuse travel photos with holiday photos.

Yours are travel photos. Different.

A holiday photo would be kids on the beach with ice creams. The pretty castle with your friend standing in front. The cute miniature railway with your friends posing by the locomotive. And so on. Not my taste, and seemingly not yours either.

I appreciate your photos, although some seem to be lacking in contrast: not so much black and white as grey and grey. Also you often seem to stand a long way back, so either walk forward a few meters or crop onscreen later.

I do not care if people like my photos or not. I don't make photos of cute kittens that people may love, but decaying walls that I like.

Looking at your series of your walk to Santiago (?) I would love to see these in an illustrated guide for others following the same route. Ideal.

Of course gear is not everything, in fact it's hardly important at all. Put your extra cash into film, travel, and going to visual cultural events instead.

Perhaps try taking these photos back to your local photo club and asking people there for their assessments of them as photos; not 'holiday photos'.

 

[Steve Bellayr]

I looked at your photos on Flickr. In some of them I'd recommend more contrast, technical. On others I did not feel that you were "close enough" to the subject. You needed a better relationship to the subject...a connection & intensity. And, edginess...my personal bane of contention with fotoclubs. Fotoclubs are great for technique but for the most part miss the Robert Frank edginess. Another thing is that you posted all black and white photos. Would the subject matter have been better photographed in color? You should not disregard the Fotoclub as they are a good source of technical info. but you will need to have confidence in your work. Sometimes you need to stand back from your work and look at it at a later time.

 

[RML]

And sometimes it's your perception of your work that's "flawed". Perhaps your photos don't exactly fit what you think you're shooting. Instead of changing the photos, try to think about what you photograph from more than one view point. Street photography? Or perhaps it's something different? Travel or holiday photography? Maybe it's street, or documentary. Or maybe it's a genre with no name, just what you yourself give to it.

 

[skibeerr]

And sometimes it's your perception of your work that's "flawed". Perhaps your photos don't exactly fit what you think you're shooting. Instead of changing the photos, try to think about what you photograph from more than one view point. Street photography? Or perhaps it's something different? Travel or holiday photography? Maybe it's street, or documentary. Or maybe it's a genre with no name, just what you yourself give to it.

It's about the foto's not the name. But I agree they need a context.
For the Camino foto's I kept thinking about the road, and the arrows being a metaphore for life.

I do like the words reportage and documentary. 😉

Technically my develloping techniques leave a lot to be desired, I am working on them. For me the two foto's of the cros are more what I want. Rollei r3 in d76.
The grey grey ones are tri-x in Tmax develloper.

I am not a member of a club but right now following a second " workshop" wich wil end in an ,extremely local, exhibition.

Thanks Jon, Steve and RML

 

[Photog9001]

your flickr images strike me as something that's searching. for style, perhaps theme, subject, approach... but searching. as opposed to being satisfied with framing a certain object (be it sandcastle or not) within a rectangular frame. i'm not sure if you can speed up such searches. but if you can, try to discuss them in a non-technical context, it's a seconandary thing in this respect

"What I feel until now is that the foto's I make do not appeal to people and are only appreciated by me and those close to me because of emotional value. So in general you could say I want my foto's to have a added value."

who do you do photography for?
anyway, i'm pretty much in the same boat, people don't like my images much. i can't honestly say that i don't give a ****, but i can't and don't want to shoot crowd pleasers anyway... (except for the stuff that pays the bills, but that's another matter..)

 

[RML]

It's about the foto's not the name.

I agree but words have a habit of limiting your mind set. Say "street photography" and you'll have a definition (however vague!) in your head. And that definition may very well limit you, stop you from going beyond "street photography" (whatever that is to you). "Portraiture" is another one of those fine words with a nice definition that may limit you.

Try to get out of the pigeon hole ("vacation photos", "holiday photos", whatever the pigeon hole is for you). Forget about genres, styles. Don't give your photography a name.

Or give it a name that means something only to you. I did that with my "art". I call it "tortuographie" ( http://tortuographie.blogspot.com/ ). It's nothing I've ever encountered, though it does remind me of certain other forms of art.

The word has only meaning to me. I invented it. I use it. I define it. I found that very liberating. It beats searching for a genre to fit in but not being able to find it. Now I just do what I feel is right; what I feel is "tortuographie".

 

[williams473]

I actually think you have quite a good eye, an in fact disagree that you need to get in closer - I think your strongest compositions are the more sparsely filled frames. The more visual elements enter the frame, the more complicated the balance gets.

I do agree your images need contrast work. It is not neccesarily a function of film or developer completely - if you're printing, try multi contrast paper and filters, or if using a computer, just boost the contrast some, or use levels in Photoshop to makes sure you use the entire range of the negative. A good rule of tumb is, have some area of the print that is very black, and some area that is very white, and let the rest of the tones fall (for starters.)

You have some promising work - one other note - leave out the cheesy titles! 😀 Your viewer doesn't need to be told what you were doing when you amde the photo - the meaning of the work should communicate non-verbally, even if you are illustrating something.

Above all, keep going. Keep at it - you have some very promising images here. If you can afford it, take a class or two at a university or local meeting center. Thanks for having the guts to have your work critiqued!

 

[oscroft]

Hi Wim,

I think you are showing a very good eye for composition there. A lot of your compositions look "natural" - not forced or artificial - in a way that people often find hard to achieve.

And yes, those are travel photos, not holiday photos (Holiday photos are what my mum takes when she points her camera vaguely in the direction of family members posing for her with ice creams and silly hats).

As people have said, a bit more technical work is perhaps needed with development, but I think you should be pleased with those.