by Floriana Barbu

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• This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.
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• Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

Remarkable photograph, the composition, tonality, drama, and subject matter make this great image. The format is perfectly balanced. The black and white presentation simplify the image and allow the viewer to focus on all the strengths as previously mentioned. For this is one of the best POW's I have seen here. The image speaks for itself ( while I know some manipulation would have been done, it would not be more than could be achieved under an enlarger) it is truly a great photograph. Regards RJE

Very, very simple & good. A lone child giving a feeling of solitude. The footprints leading the eye to a subject heading into the great unknown. I like that there's no definitive horizon line

Floriana: This truly is a remarkable photograph. Its mood is both peaceful and mysterious. There is an amazing convergence of sky, sand, and water. We don't know where the subject has been, except as evidenced by a trail of footsteps, but she is headed directly toward the horizon.

Congratulations on a fine, fine piece of art. It's now in my favorites.

My best,

michael

reminiscent of all your powerfully poetic b&w images... consistently a specific fantasy yet stark aesthetic honed to perfection, yet each individual image always engaging onto itself. here again in this image a human viscerally engaged in nature, enveloped by nature, making his/herself communed with nature in the raw. this particular image is that poetry of the human, this young girl, of her own volition walking fearlessly, or maybe inevitably, into the a stormy sky, sea, beach all tied into the inevitably resurrecting storm, the mystery.... with the human surrounded by it?, embracing it? creating it? is it a metaphor for her inevitable adventure through adolescence, through the mysteries of life, is it her rights of passage? a beautifully and powerfully crafted image, beautifully and powerfully imagined, and extremely effective towards its intent. our recognition of you is only natural, oops a pun, lol... ;-} dp

This will not do. This is a dreadful pictorialist cliche from the footprints in the sand to the phony brooding sky turning into glop as it is smeared together with the beach.

What does this remind me of? Carmel art. Go to the expensive galleries in Carmel, California and you'll see paintings of the translucent moon-lit wave repeated ad infinitum. The stupid rich buy stuff like that by the yard and stick it in their living rooms.

I've seen photos and paintings like this Photo of the Week before. Like the translucent moon-lit wave it gives the viewer a ready-made emotional high without demanding an once of intelligent thought.

Note how cliche-ladened the responses to this photograph are. A lot of silly sentimental baggage has been loaded on to this image. If you think this represents the adolescent rite of passage in facing the great unknown, you have a bad or selective memory. That rite of passage is not a simple walk along the beach (or through a meadow, as Boris Pasternak wrote). That rite of passage is hell. The romantic walk on the beach comes later--after you have paid your dues.

Thumbs down to this Photo of the Week.

It shows imagination, which is great. For me, though, it's way overblown. A kind of hyper-pitched sentimentality yearning toward the mythological in scope. It seems to be screaming at me.

It doesn't take much imagination to scream. I see only the safe and predictable. This image is sophomoric.

Alex, luckily, we don't have to see it the same way. I understood quite well what you saw. I was talking about how I saw it. We agree on a lot here, disagree on some, definitely disagree on tone of voice of critique.