TOP reader Mark Muse's portrait of Benita, the subject of Patricia Dalzell's portrait that we talked about in this post. (No one has ever told me Benita's last name—maybe she has just the one, like Cher or Ctein?)
Mike
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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Mark Muse: "Keller."
Can we talk Ken into another job on this one?
Posted by: Clayton Lofgren | Sunday, 18 July 2010 at 11:13 AM
See, this is why I'm not an artist. I would have deleted this one for being out of focus, never guessing that this was the only "artistic" shot I had made.
Posted by: John Roberts | Sunday, 18 July 2010 at 01:34 PM
someone's had a couple....!
(I really enjoy dropping by this site)
Posted by: ben ng | Sunday, 18 July 2010 at 02:25 PM
John,
And it wouldn't have been a picture...for you. We are all "after" the things that move us and touch us, and those are emphatically not the same things for everybody. I have a friend, for instance, who loves atonal, non-rhythmic music. Some of it is what many people would call "noise." Yet it's what he craves, and he can distinguish good from bad.
I know a guy for whom technical perfection is a turn-off. If a picture is "well exposed" and "well composed" and "well focused" or, God forbid, pretty, he'll reject it. He's just seen it before, it's obvious to him, uninteresting; he gets nothing from it....
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Sunday, 18 July 2010 at 03:56 PM
Seems like a very informal snap of Benita. I would never have recognized her! Her appearance and the setting are diametrically different from Patricia's portrait. The conga drums in the background suggest her connection to Cuba/Latin America.
Posted by: Ken Tanaka | Sunday, 18 July 2010 at 06:39 PM
I get it but must say that being this out of focus is really not necessary to get the point across. But yes, in the end I am sick of pretty landscapes, perfect flowers, bug macros and smiling portraits.
Posted by: MJFerron | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 12:04 AM
I think Ken Tanaka is being generous with the term "very informal snap". This photo looks like a candidate for Mike's post on the 30th June "Don't You Just Hate That".
We've have excellent discussion on what is legitimate manipulation of an image and what isn't + what is Art and what isn't. Surely we can recognise a near miss?
Posted by: Sven W | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 01:20 AM
Mark should take advantage of the micro-adjust function on his camera if it has one. Not sure if he noticed but that setup is backfocusing just a hair!
Posted by: Karl | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 06:54 AM
Mike, when you mentioned that:
I know a guy for whom technical perfection is a turn-off. If a picture is "well exposed" and "well composed" and "well focused" or, God forbid, pretty, he'll reject it. He's just seen it before, it's obvious to him, uninteresting; he gets nothing from it....
I was wondering about something quite similar! I had just done some back-of-the-envelope calculations for (hit rate)(shots/day)(per year) and came to an astonishing number of keepers. I mean, a large number for me to work with, annually, and a truly huge number for a pro.*
I thought to myself, good heavens, what am I going to do with all of those photos? What on earth am I going to want to take pictures of in five years? What will still be interesting?
I begin to see the answer here, at _valerian, (the fellow who does Tokyo Camera Style, John Sypal.) There's a certain joy there, and an acceptance of technically-impure colors and textures.
*even assuming a film-era rate of (36/day)*(365 days)*(1% keepers), you still end up with 131 really nice photos. 5% might not be an unreasonable rate for an expert, so that would be 357 right there. If one shoots easily ten times as much a day with digital...
Posted by: Will Frostmill | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 08:32 AM
She looks a totally different person, I wonder which is closest to her true self?
Here is here is website:
http://benitakellerphoto.artspan.com/index.php
Sort of Bio:
http://photo.box.sk/about.php3?id=53
Newspaper article:
http://shepherdstownchronicle.com/page/content.detail/id/500869/Life-through-the-lens-of-Benita-Keller.html
This is quite funny!:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=577712
Paul
Posted by: Paul Parker | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 09:14 AM
In my opinion, the subject is not out of focus; rather, the photographer used a slow shutter speed and the subject moved.
Flickr is a good website for people who are turned off by technical perfection. Flickr has many examples of the genre.
Posted by: Bill Rogers | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 03:56 PM
Reading the comments one keeps going back up to the image and looking afresh, seeing what attracts some and repels others. We see so much 'in your eye' stuff that coming across a quieter image it is all too easy to skim past and dismiss it, especially with its obvious 'fault'. Taking the time to read this photo and then maybe re-evaluate our initial reaction has to be A Good Thing.
KG.
Cornwall.UK
Posted by: Kerry Glasier | Monday, 19 July 2010 at 05:25 PM
I must say that this is a monumentally unflattering image. She looks about 7/8ths plastered, and probably about to burst into maudlin tears.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Sunday, 25 July 2010 at 11:10 AM