Submitter's name:	Ralf Loi
Title:	Making supplies
Gear used:	OM-4 + 28/2.
Diaphragm:	F8
Shutter speed:	Auto
Film used:	Velvia
Subject information:	A man in the Baleares Islands (Spain) going to the usual shopping tour.
Here you can leave some comments about this picture. Please fill out all the fields before submitting the form. Once you're done filling out the form, click the "Leave comments" button, after which you can see your comments down below.
Your name:
Your e-mail:
Comments:

Comment left by: Olaf Greve (no e-mail specified)

I love the colours in this picture, it seems that (but for the door, the pavement and the guy's skin) everything is rendered in blue and white. There's also a sense of timelessness to this shot.

Comment left by: John Pendley (jpendley@alltel.net)

A wonderful shot. The first thing that struck me is the apparent two dimensional effect of the entire picture except for the man. (Well, ok, there's the perspective difference between the sidewalk/street and the building.) The heavy shadow of the man lends to his apparent three dimensionality. It's a very effective way of drawing the attention immediately to the subject and makes the picture special. I do wish that the corner of the building, just visible at the right, were vertical--parallel to the edge of the image--but that's just a personal thing with me; others might not be bothered at all. Finally, the design of the composition is very effective: it suggests abstraction, and this, too, puts the man in bold relief. Great job.

Comment left by: Bill Pearce (bspearce@earthlink.net)

Sorry if the erroneous keystrokes posted the header with a blank message a couple of times! I really like this. Here's a great example of where a film like velvia or the late lamentetd Ultra50 really shines! It's a reminder of how color is an important part of composition. If you draw my name for the Christmas exchange, you know what I want! Bill Pearce

Comment left by: Eric Pederson (epederso@darkwing.uoregon.edu)

Very nice photograph! The colors are indeed lovely, and I'm quite impressed you got the contrast in control. I might have expected the whitewash to be featureless, but even the jpeg file has texture there. I would crop out the left and right edges myself. Cleans up the composition by removing the wiring-box and incomplete window as well as eliminating the most obviously converging parallel line.

Comment left by: Bill Barber (nsurit@aol.com)

Did you cut this out of one of those slick travel magazines? You could have. This is really a nice photograph that any of us would be proud to call our own. Another nice image might have been just before he got to the next doorway with his full shadow cast on the wall rather emerging from the shadow. Been then again, it might not have been either. Heck you should have just had your motor drive cranked up and really burning film.

Comment left by: Tris Schuler (tristanjohn@mindspring.com)

Nice shot. There's a bread store in San Sebastian called Labeak, in front of which the women line up in a long battalion four abreast each morning. Wonderful bread and such, by the way--but then why else would they all form a queue? Anyway, I took a couple of shots of this store's exterior, but not in the morning when they all lined up. If I get over there again next year as planned I'll make a point of waking early to take that very picture. As for the perspective of plumb as commented on by John: I agree, it's off in this shot. The man is walking uphill, as is evident from a study of the pavement vis-a-vis the junction it makes with the buildings. Either the photographer didn't realize this or chose to render the image as "level" in real life. Either way it's a mistake and perhaps should be rectified. (I'm all for artistic license, and I recently posted a street photo to my Photonet portfolio where I exercised this license by increasing the tilt of the frame--it depicted a couple dancing in the street during the La Semana Grande celebration--but in this case the purpose was to acentuate the natural feeling of movement and "whirl" which the photo already possessed. Here's it just strikes me as either a bad decision or a simple oversight.)

Comment left by: Ralf Loi (no e-mail specified)

Eric, you're right, it was better to crop the left side, I did realize after the submissione of the image but I simply did a scan of the printed image (Fuji paper). I was near the subject because the street is not wide, and not willing to have too much road in the photo, I pointed the camera slighty up (converging lines - voila'). I didn't follow the man simply because just after the left side of the photo the street was in shadow, but I missed the winder, so I had chance for only one shot. Tris, if you look carefully, the road in front of the right side of the "bred shop" (panaderia) is flat and only at the door it goes uphill. I shot handheld (no tripod with bubble level, and no grid on the screen), probably using the up of the shop as a line - ok it's not perfect and the scan is worse than the print, on the print I'm off of only 2 mm over 30 cm. Next time I will adjust the scan with Photoshop!

[Previous]

[Return to index]

[Next]