Random Excellence: Juan Amores

At first I didn't know how to contact this photographer, but a kindly reader, William Flowers, clued me in about how to use Flickr Mail. I haven't kept up with Flickr's changes well enough, obviously.

Photo by Juan Amores

Eventually I was able to contact the photographer, Juan Amores (his real name—he goes by "John Love" in various places) and he did give me permission to publish it. You might still want to look at it at this link, where it's bigger and easier to see.

I like the tension between the strong colors of the manmade "frames" and the subtler, more earthy colors of the natural scene, but what strikes me about this picture is the balanced eccentricity of it, "eccentric" in the sense of off-centeredness. The graphic elements have strong echoes—the natural scene split into three areas by two strong horizontals echoed by a horizontal line in the green area on the left, the two small spherical shapes (bolt heads, I suppose) echoing between left and right—all the reinforcing and yet not quite matching curves. And I like the degree of bokeh in the foreground objects—just enough to make a contrast of soft and sharp, but not too blurry, as we more often see these days.

The picture reminds me a bit, in its colors and strong design, of Harald Mante's work.

The accents probably save the picture from being just an exercise—the ship on the body of water and that improbable and odd bowed metal pole bisecting the circular "picture within the picture"—those elements give the picture of bit of life and somehow give the eye a bit more "permission" to dwell on the formal compositional aspects. You have to be careful about echoes in photographs—they can be sort of dulling somehow, metronomic, if they're too obvious. That the green and orange colors are so nicely complementary adds a nice touch—supporting the "balanced but unbalanced" feel of the picture.

Well seen.

I happened across Juan's picture (randomly, hence the post title) at fredmiranda.com, while paging my way through a massive Sigma DP2 Merrill thread.

Mike
(Thanks to Juan and William)

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dave Levingston: "That's a wonderful photograph."

Juan Amores: "Thanks, it's an honor for me!!"

Comments

[Moose]

You found his DP2M set?

Moose

[William Flowers]

Go to his Flickr profile page here: https://www.flickr.com/people/johnloves/

Look toward the upper right corner for three dots, mouse over the dots and you'll get a drop down menu that leads to his Flickr mail.

[Thanks William! I've obviously not kept up with the ins and outs of Flickr adequately. I tried this. We'll see how it works. --Mike]

[Roxie]

either of the links below the pic goes to his flickr page, you could send him a 'flickr mail'. Kind of weird there is no other contact info though.. his flickr page has more great work!

[David]

Very cool....