I haven't seen that before, very cool memorable picture, special effects without touching photoshop

Hi Glen,

Good to see your work here as well as in the OPC and BetterPhoto contests. Hope you get a lot of good feedback.

This is the first photo here that gets 10 from me for originality. This was a great idea.

Great work Glen. Very creative

Great Photo. truly original and fantastic composition. This is a print to be proud of!

real creative contemporary photography.

What an original idea!

Interesting piece! I love it!

Quite frankly I am shocked. Brilliant idea!!!

another good idea for abstract photography

Congrats, Einstein! I'm not much of an abstact fan, but my goodness, did you have a vision?!

doubtlessly the best artistic photo on the net!

Creative but I'm not sure I like it too much. You said you wanted to create a memorable portrait, and I think you did make something memorable, but it doesn't strike me as something that portrays some character of you wife. I can't get past it being an upside down blurry portrait behind a bunch of distorted smaller portraits. I think the setup is much more interesting as an abstract, and as such, I maybe would have looked at different content, but from what you wrote, it doesn't to me meet its intent as a portrait. I guess I'm trying to say that I don't really get a feeling from this portrait of the intent of it being an abstract. I don't think the abstract structure of it adds to the portrait aspect. I don't think all portraits need to be straightforward, and I think your idea could lead to a very interesting portrait, but I don't think this one is it.

Compositionally, the lines are uncomfortable to me and I think that maybe cropping it some so that her face in the background isn't so prominent and isn't in so much competition with the more interesting foreground images, making it more of an abstract or indistinct background, would give it more impact.

Exposure, focus and lighting are of course terrific. I wonder what a deep DOF with the background in focus would look like?

This is very creative and I never would have thought of it.

Congratulations on your second POW

Well, I have seen a similiar picture in a british photograhy magazine. Instead of a potrait, the water drop shows the image of an American Flag

Well executed. But not original. I think there's an old picture called 1000 faces.

Interesting... you may also want to look at the work of Peter Keetman, a well-known German photograper (ca. 1950) who did a lot of work with water reflections/drops/etc and most of his work, in general, is purely abstract. Unfortunately, I could not find an online copy of his "A Thousand and One Faces" (1957) which is very similar to this.

You will find a copy of 1000+1 Gesichter (Faces) at the following web address:

http://ms-collection.de/artists/keetman2.htm

As well as Keetman's work, I have seen this theme used numerous times, and I usually like them in most cases. It is still untapped with many more creative uses, I think.

If you like these kind of photos, there's a big version of Keetmans photo in B&W magazine issue 17 (Febraury 2002).

Nice done, but after looking for about 5 minutes at it, I was bored... Congratulations on your POW although!

Here is a photograph by Peter Keetman of water drops on a glass surface. But it is quite different than what is shown in POW. I was not able to find his photograph named "Thousand Faces."

Very interesting work, Glen ! Congrats !

Creative, very cool!!!

Sad, very sad that it has been choosen photo of the week. Searching for controversy, perhaps?. It has something to do with photography, beeing this a means to achieve such result, but it is not a photo.

Often there is such a tussle about "originality". I find this image to be a complex and creative approach which is clever as well as interesting. It is technically and asthetically pleasing and fun to my eye. As always, Art is subjective.

Is there original thought anymore? Is there anything, in photography that has not been done/photographed before by someone? Originality, in my opinion, is simply a fresh way at looking at something that has been done. When I sat on my porch last week- looking at the rain drops on the leaves at night that were side lit by a tungsten outdoor light -- I promised my self to photograph the wonderful effect of the water drops and experiment with the lighting and the droplets that looked like beads of mercury. I found the prospect to be exciting. Has it been done before? I don't know. Will that stop me from doing it? No. Will my version be orginal? Yes! A resounding yes. What will make it so is my choices and my inspiration and positions, angles of view, focal length, chemicals, playing with light etc, etc. It is the creativity of the photographer towards an old topic or a special moment (e.g. journalism) that does the trick.

Well Cristian, if it's not a photo, what is it?

Sorry but I've only seen this done a few hundred times or so. Where have you guys been???

I've seen this done quite a few times. I like how they look so much I was going to do one but, I thought it was too played out. I guess not. If you want to see how a shot like this is REALLY done check out PETER KEETMAN's "A Thousand and One Faces". It's in Black and White Magazine's Feb. 2002 issue #17 on page 137.

Not another originality debate.. it seems nothing is ever original enough for some people, but I can't help but feel if we were presented with something totally original, were that possible, we either wouldn't see it or would freak and reject it. This picture uses some phrases from the photographic language to say what the photographer wants, so what? It attempts something different for a portrait and it works. In the POW context it IS original. It also beats using historical precedents as excuses not to explore alternatives, and that seems implicit in detracting from this photo because so and so did it before. The been-there-done-that attitude is really boring. This shot provokes some thought about what a photograph can be, and is a nice refreshing choice for POW, IMO.

Someone above had asked about what it would look like if the photograph were taken with a greater DOF. Well I looked up at the technical details to see it was recorded with an F-stop of 22. So how the out of focus background with such a deep focus? That part irks me, other than that I find it's a creative photograph. It is "creative and memorable," though it would be a portrait better suited for a Sci-Fi novelest or fortune teller. I dunno, that's just my opinion. Good job nonetheless!

Original or not, I like this photo a lot. Damn...wish I'd thought of it...of course I'll have to rip it off now :-)

One question: was Photoshop involved here?

Your second POW....

I saw this photo when I went to your portfolio during your first stint as POW. This one caught my attention then as it does now.

This one is top notch. It has a very sci-fi'sh look about it. I love the morphing faces in the different drops. Very creative portrait and fun to look at.

I defy anyone to show me a truly original piece of work. Short of the first picture of the Earth rising over the moon's landscape, I haven't seen an original piece since.

But.....

This does have some originality to it, in that I haven't seen too many like it on this site, and there's what - 300K+ images here?

You have a portfolio full of fantastic images Glen. Wouldn't be surprised to see you grace this POW again for the hat trick. Very well done!

Yes it has been done before. So has writing like a group of sour grapers. Miles Davis once was quoted as saying "You spend a 100 years mastering your instrument, and by then your obsolete". In case your wondering what that means lemme clue you in - NOTHING IS ORIGINAL ANYMORE. Everything ever written, painted, photographed or film is simply an interpertation of what we have seen before. Every portrait we take has been done in counless other mediums ad naseum, does that make it bad? Really all you folks that cry out "Unoriginal, I've seen it before" just seem to me to be saying "Man I wish I made POW at photo.net, but since I didn't I'll just trash this photo for being unoriginal". Hell I've seen paintings from the 16th century done with this subject matter.

Great shot BTW. As far as wondering why at F/22 there is no greater DOF, the lens was mounted in reverse. A great way to make a Macro shot without having to spend a fourtune on Macro Lenses.

i think it is creative. original?...hmm yes,in a way. i've seem this same format in a picture of the american flag somewhere else. portrait? well, i can't hardly see the subject, much less tell anything about her caracter or personality. framing could be easily improved by just leveling the image, so you get straight vertical & horizontal lines (if that was the purpose). Glen probably shot this with his wife standing straight and then inverted the image when posting it so we could see clearly the face on the drops, but there are two water drops on the upper left corner that kept the inverted image, hhmmm...i guess because these water drops had a different curvature than the others. interesting.

To Glen: Inspiring. What a great effect Congrats on POW, it's well deserved.

Now then:

To Cristian: Let's see, it was an mage recorded on film and not altered in Photoshop. So, it's hard to see how it's not a photo.

To Dustin: This was taken with a reversed 50mm lens plus two extension tubes focused on a screen directly in front of the lens. It's called "macro," and with the extremely close focus, by definition it's going to be impossible to have a depth of field larger than an inch, or perhaps even a centimeter or shorter. I've done something similar with a 20mm reverse mounted on the front of a 135mm telephoto, and I couldn't get more than about a 3mm depth of field at f/22.

Some inflamatory bits have been edited out. Although well intentioned points were made, we are attempting to keep the debate on the image and not on site politics as these things tend to escalate

if this screening technique has been used before, so what? does someone have to invent an entirely new technique to make a worthy photograph?

it doesn't do a whole lot for me in terms of providing information or insight about the subject, so i'm not sure if it is the best use of the technique, but it has an aesthetic appeal, and is unusual, at least, i have yet to see such an image on photo.net. It also looks like it was set up and executed well.

I'm familiar with Macro photography, but have never heard of reversing lenses before. Something new for me to learn for today!

It's creative and technically very interesting, and not bad aesthetically, either.

I like it quite a bit, and am generally obsessed with images as true to reality. But for me I think it would work better if it were two exposures sandwiched together in photoshop; one with whatever aperture would provide just another depth of field to retain the screen, and another just-slightly-out-of-focus portrait of the subject from the same locale. Put 'em together so that the faces are pointing up in the same direction & you'd have a phenomenal image to me.

I think it's very interesting what you've done here and it has a lot of potential to be a great image! It has good color and I like all the different images of your wife. It's very distracting that I can see your wife's image upside-down and blurred in the background. What could make this better (I think) would be to have all the squares filled with water or maybe have them filled in a checkerboard pattern. Possibly the same idea only instead of using a screen, us a bubble blower loop filled with soap or even the bubble itself. I think you've done very well creatively and it's a good idea to start with! Keep working on it!

Well, i like the concept but i saw it some time ago in Petersen's Photographic magazine. Instead of a face, that picture has an American Flag on it. Let's be serious about originality. I could copy any POW with the hope to be the next one.

Its a 10 for me

While the execution isn't perfect in my opinion, (and I don't have the time at the moment to go in to why) I love this image! It's amazingly creative, and I commend you for it. Very interesting, and very unique, it's very fun and I definitely think this is a wonderful idea.

I'll tell you what's not original: calling people who have the guts to critic the image "sour grapers". Thank God they exist instead of a bunch of sickly sweet "ooo, this is so wonderful!" comments. There's photosig.com for that. <p>Yes, although not altogether original an idea in and of itself it is a nice twist on the "beads of water drops on glass with a flower behind" image. I've always liked the overall concept and while this one perhaps could have been more carefully executed to create a more "enduring" and perhaps more professional look it's not bad at all. Congrats.

Crtiqueing a photo for being just "Unoriginal" is no real critique at all. It's just as bad as gushing needlessly.

There is nothing wrong with strong critism, when it actually has something to say. Simply writing it off as "unoriginal" is total poppy-cock.

May as well write off Ansel Adams, since other folks had already done landscapes, or Eddie Adams since others had already shot battlefields.

I stand by the sour grapes statement.

One thing that this particular photo brings to mind is the old Zen concept of the universe really being made of an infinite number of waterdrops haning from a web. We see them from afar, and thereby only see the universe in reflection.

If I am ever taking a photo of a fly screen manufacturer, I might just try this technique. Love the photo.

First of all I like the photo, and it is a nice example of photo of the week. have I seen this technique before, oh yeah, in the pages of darkroom photography, popular photo etc, etc, it is breifly covered in John Hedgecoe's guide to color photography, the idea is not new but then again very few techniques we use are new only the idea is new. The techniques are mearly tools to get to the final image (as an aside note photoshop is just another tool sorry personal opinion) the only things that bother me are that this is a set up shot like in a studio why aren't the mesh wires parellel to the outside edges of the image, also I would have manicured the droplettes a little diffrently and I would have tried to do it live or with a tinted B&W. But that is only my vision and we each have a unique vision otherwise all we would ever do is place our tripods in the Ansel Adams memorial tripod sockets and shoot half dome over and over again. PS aren't these dropletts refracting the light not reflecting it?

I agree with comments above evaluating people's need of bashing a POW (or any other picture on this site) because of its "lack of originality". The problem has been talked about a million times, but apparently, it can't be stressed enough. That is why I agree with comments I’ve read about changing the "originality"rating to "cleverness". There are practically no "original" ways of executing a photograph, but there are countless "clever" ways of doing it.

I don't agree with the comments of having the background face more in focus. While experimenting never hurts, there is something called "hierarchy” which must almost always be respected, and the out of focus background helps this. The most important elements are the droplet-faces, not the background face. One of the most perfectly squared droplets is well placed near the intersection of thirds, so I think the composition is quite well.

Cheers, buena foto.

I'll tell you what's not original: calling people who have the guts to critic the image "sour grapers".

Very true. Some genius who can't stand the thought that other people don't agree with him does it every week.

Nobody was critiquing it as unoriginal anyway. We were simply trying to put an end to the initial stream of tyros wetting themselves over a trick we've seen a thousand times.

You're free to think it's original or it isn't. You're free to think people who criticize it as original or unoriginal are right or wrong, or that originality is important or it isn't. (Personally I think there are original bodies of work, but original individual photos are pretty rare).

But when someone attributes, without a shred of evidence, nefarious motives to people he knows absolutely nothing about, that obviously says a lot more about him than anyone else. Assuming that people who disagree with you in subjective matters are objectively wrong is one level of self-delusion. Concluding that their opinion must be the result of some character defect, which you then advertise widely, gets into the realm of zealotry.

That's very very cool a photo! I ever tried reversed 24mm and 50mm but never came out with such great idea! Great shot!

Very cool. very creative. Not sure what it is that is keeping mr from the 10 on the aesthetics, yet. Original? YES. Sure everything has been done. I haven't seen this in any photos I have looked at, yet. Even if I had, it took thought, technical knowledge, setup, and creativity to capture this image. If there was some manipulation in photoshop, who cares? It is a great image. KUDOS!

I find the image gimmicky. Simply, the distortion doesn't relate to the subject. Its a clever visual trick that doesn't communicate anything. Ultimately, this is the point that frustrates me the most about photo.net - there isn't enoguh discussion about the relationship between image and idea - this usually becomes an issue over the POW.

As far as originality is concerned, the image is certainly a creative use of materials. However, I don't see an original message here - and I do think originality is best measured in the message.

Crtiqueing a photo for being just "Unoriginal" is no real critique at all.

This would be true if people just said "it's not original" without giving references. But people gave them, and references to the work of Peter Keetmans were very interesting. The purpose of POW is neither to scream "wonderful work" every two minutes nor to defend/attack the photographer, but to learn.

For what concerns originality: the art of photography is older than one century and it's obvious that most of 'original' shots were already discovered. So it's very difficult (I'm saying very difficult, not impossible) to find out an 'original photo' that is 'a photo that nobody on earth ever made until now'. But originality is not a 'digital' (true, false) concept. I remind everybody that we can give originality a range from 0 thru 10. For what concerns this photo I would say it's pretty up in the scale of originality, even if is not a perfect ten since it's not a completely new idea. From the technical point of view is nearly perfect.

Mary Ball is right in pointing out that the raw idea behind a photo may be not original, but it can be implemented in many different ways (and some of them may add a pinch of further originality). For instance, for what I can see following a posted URL, the Keetmans' photo "1001 faces" is a bit different than Glen's one: it seems that there are no visible details on faces, conveying more the feeling of a crowd of clones than a portrait, where Glen's photo is more a portrait since we can at least guess the main characters of Glen's wife.

It appears to me that two of the droplets toward the upper left show the girl's mouth and nose inverted. Yet all of the other drops show her face upright. What's the optical explanation for this? or am I seeing it worng?

The water's surface tension (which allows it to hold on to droplet shapes) makes the water "films" in this picture have different shapes (which will depend on amount of water, air flow/wind, etc.). If the water is bowed out in the middle, like a convex lens, then the image will be upside down and smaller if it is more than twice the effective "focal length" of the water. If the water is thinner in the middle, it will act like a concave lens and make the object smaller but upright (relative to the original). We see both of these effects in this picture.

I would like to point out how frustating it was to take this image. I had a lot of trouble aquiring perfectly straight window screen for one. The depth of feild on this image is very very small indeed [paper thin in fact even at f22]. Another problem was the water drops popping while I was preparing the the set up. I certainly did run through a lot of film to get it right.While this image might not appeal to everyone because of its abstract nature. It creates a lot of interest and attention. It is important for me as a photographer to create such images.

In my limited experience, I find that photography can involve a lot of problem solving. I am pleased that you mentioned the difficulty involved in obtaining your result. The perseverance that it takes to make something like this is something to be admired. In viewing this photo, my eye traveled for a long time before I felt that I had sufficiently "seen" it. Thank you for an interesting viewing experience, inspiration by your example, and having the courage required to deal with POW celebrity!

That is so cool. Now this is a sign of an artist, one who does something most people couldn't even dream up of. I give it tops for originality.

i hadn't rated any photos before looking this one,because of my indolence. I just wanted to rate!!! originality!!!

I liked it and I will try to do a similar one :-)

Here is something similar...

http://www.photo-zone.net/images/tribute/keetman/1a.jpg

Lee

Looks very similar to me.

I do not think people will be concerned too much with this POW's originality if the editors did not start their comment about this photo with "This is a truly original...".

I downloaded the image from the above link and if this is not exactly the same concept, I do not know what is (the water droplets, the screen, the photo underneath).

Yeah, the idea isn't that original but still looks different from '1001 Faces'. In that one, the tiny faces were almost exact fascimile of the main portrait whereas this one, each is different, almost giving different emotions despite being of the same picture. I'm not sure whether he caught the 'essence' of his wife which is what portraits usually are meant to portray. Anyway, the photographer himself never said it was original (others did, perhaps without giving much time to think). Well, I like it and any other non-originals which strive for some differences. This is not blatant copying.

I think Glen should be rightfully proud of the results he achieved here. It stretches the definition of "portraiture" a bit, and certainly some of the mini-wifes are more flattering likenesses than others, but the overall photographic effect is eye-catching and clearly the result of good pre-visualization and solid technique.

The originality debate will recur endlessly, I'm afraid. As photography becomes increasingly accessible, both for viewing (through more published work and online exposure) and for participation (lower cost of entry, etc.), it will also become increasingly easy to spot influences and/or copy-cat works. However, it also becomes easier to find similar previous work and assume copy-cat intentions. Though working solely out of personal vision might be the utopian photographic art ideal, I don't find anything wrong with learning from influential work up to a point. I also don't know if Glen was previously familiar with the other work(s) cited here (if the answer is above, I missed it). Even were he so familiar, I couldn't automatically condemn him for using a technique that pre-existed this photograph. That said, disclosing where we learned techniques in our forum here can only further everyone's development, so it would be appreciated, of course.

Hopefully, that was coherent. Enjoy.

I just can tell : outstanding!

Fabulous effect. Just one question, why f22? With a planar subject, why such a tight aperture? I would think you could do it much shorter exposure and wider aperture so your wife wont have to sit so still...

that's a good question. though, if she is this out of focus at f22, how blurred would she be at f8 or lower??

originality......yada yada yada. yes marshall i believe this tiresome debate will go on endlessly. which is too bad. if i were a teacher of photography (and i am most certainly not, i am a student) i wouldn't mind at all letting students dabbling in mimicry, in replicating and borrowing ideas-both in vision and in technique. there is much to be learned in doing so. to look at an image and wonder "how did they do that???" is a great feeling, and going out and trying to do it is even better. you can realize just how hard it is to replicate a shot. you can copy someone out of true intellectual curiousity just as much as you can out of artistic laziness. marshall, perhaps this is the line drawn when you say "up to a point".

can you mimic robert frank and his irony?? or dorothea lange and her dignity?? lewis hine in his humanity?? if you can, kudos to you!! how many of us have tried to capture "the decisive moment"??? paul simon was asked whether he believed in guitar students studying formal music theory as well as studying other guitarist and their style. his response was "absolutely!! why re-invent the wheel??"

i take this to mean that it is possible to take elements, learn from them what they have learned, and strive to make them your own.

andre

The purpose of POW is neither to scream "wonderful work" every two minutes nor to defend/attack the photographer, but to learn.

I agree. I have been looking at the POWs to learn something new everytime. As a rank amatuer who dreams of being serious one, POW is a one of the invaluable asset to me.

My first reaction to this picture was "What's that?", I was drawn to the image, and that combination of abstract and portait is really good. That photgraphs shows that there was a lot of tought and patience behind it, which paid off. I wish someday I could come up with a personal twist to an idea like you did... :D

Andre, I agree. Artistic laziness would be a good point to draw the line for oneself on mimicry. There's also a point of economic exploitation, but that's a different matter. Enjoy.

Lindo trabalho. Verdadeiramente F-A-N-T-Á-S-T-I-C-O! Parabéns.

The earth is what? 15 bajillion years old? Alright, so there will N E V E R be anything original again. Ever. Period. So why doesn't photo.net just drop the whole damn Originality sham? You guys NEVER see anything original in anything. Ya know, the first time I ever saw a photo like this (and yes, it was THIS very photo), I thought it was beautifully original. OK photo.et, if you don't drop the originality critique with a week, I am withdrawing from the communtiy. I am sick and tired of reading about how many other god-only-knows how many obscure and not-so-obscure photogs have already done that kinda photo to death. Ya know, this forum used to be fun, now it's just so....predictable.

Leslie Keith Koller Sikeston, Missouri

With all due respect to the subject and her photographer, am I the only person who finds this photo frightening? Between the human cloning, the distortion, the out of focus upside-down face and the sharp metal grid, this is one scary pic. Other adjectives that come to mind are "unsettling," "disturbing" and "freaky." I can't stop looking at it, though.

Re originality:
If you never knew something existed in the world before, and you one day saw it, is it not original to you? Just look at how people went crazy for Ravi Shankar in the 1960's in the west; the music he plays has been around for at least 600 years, probably more like 800, possibly as much as 1000-3000. Originality is relative.

In this photo, when there are several adjacent droplets, they join together and display a part of a larger copy of the picture.

BUT, in '1001 Faces' by Peter Keetman, (see the copy in Kunan Mo's comment above) each adjacent droplet displays a separate copy of the original image.

Can anyone explain this or is it due to digital manipulation?

Michael,

I don't think there is any digital manipulation. I think it is that in "1001 faces" each droplet is exactly large as a cell of the grid, while in Glen's photo some droplets span over more than one cell. Can you confirm Glen?

Michael, The ones that span over three or four boxes are those that are reflecting the portrait. The two that, like in 1001 faces, show what is behind the grid each show the same image.

There is no digital manipulation except slight sharpening and just a touch of cropping. I was not aware of peter keetmans 1000 faces image, when I was thinking about doing this image. I never heard of this photographer before I won the POW on PHOTO NET. If one looks closely at keetmans image the face on the droplets is the same way as the background face. Where as mine is the reverse. There are quite a few differences in other ways if you look at my image in detail. For instance my wifes face cover quite a few squares of the window screen. I am referring to the full face not a portion. But I am pleased all the diverse opinions I have received about this image. This image has won a few awards and is no stranger to controversacy.The editor of CAMERA CANADA took a lot of flack for picking this image. Some photographers just cannot accept winning abstract images.

To Glen, congratulations for your work. This photo and the rest of your folder is outstanding.

To the rest of the folks who say it is not original of anything like that, stop complaining and show us better pictures...

I think that the problem here is not in the image, or in whatever the photographer knew about the ORIGINAL of 1957 or not. Its in the fact that it was actualy voted POW by the photographic community of photo.net and others (author mentions this image winning several other awards). It is amazing how ignorant thousnds of photographers can be. History of photography should not start at the moment you have picked up a camera for the first time. Shouldn't we be just a little bit curious about works of other masters?

Maxim,

POW is not voted by the whole community of "thousands" of photographers... It is selected by a limited number of persons, named "elves".

For what concerns ignorance, most of us are here to learn. From this point of view this POW was very useful.

Some pelople have said that they get no feeling from this picture, or that it doesn´t communicate anything to them. At first, I felt uneasy with this picture (I usually don´t like distorted images). Then reading all the comments about its originality (or lack thereof) I went back and took a good look at it. And it seemed to me that its originality stems from the fact that the photographer intended to make a portrait of his wife, a very close person to him, I suppose (the other picture shown above with the same technique has a political satatement feeling to it). Let´s see: The picture is upside down (unless his wife agreed to stay in a very awkward position for a couple of hours). The "real" subject is completely out of focus. There is an object that patially obstructs his view of the subject. There are about 2 dozen distorted images of the main subject in the picture. It may not be a very realistic portrait of his wife, but it certainly is a wonderful artistic view of her.

Nice, but I prefer the B&W version, where the background face is right-side-up.

I used to come here quite frequently to learn about photography and exchange ideas. Now I just come every few months when I want to watch people critiquing someone else’s critique of another person’s comment.

I know it's difficult for some people to chew through their leather restraining straps each morning but .... sheesh!

This is truly an original shot. Very creative and inspiring. Keep it up!

Thank you for sharing the art . And only important feedback is made by whom this photo for.

This is a terrific idea, which has been well executed to say the least. I am sorry to see the negative criticism by some. To me, it's nothing more then an indication of envy by those who could not accomplish the same thing. WELL DONE!

Very cool! I am always looking for something like this to photograph, I wish I had found it before you! Great Photo!!

Soooo much 'Optical'! I love it. JM

I think people are being harsh. I am very new to photography. I love it but have inherited my father's "no imagination" gene. I find it very hard to think up new ideas for pictures so feel I can't push my new skills to the test. This picture inspired me to copy it. On a personal level it is a great picture for your own portfolio and will impress friends and family alike. On a business level, many of you point out it has been done before. So it isn't going to make a fortune but if you look at all art out there whether it be paintings or music, it all ends up being similar, the longer it has been around. I say excellent photo. :o)

STUNNING!!! Very impressive, I love it

i'm not into abstract,tho i love jazz (listening & playing). but this pic of yours really make me smile.thanks for sharing,,pc

P.S. please do some more.

I just found this gem. You are brilliant!

This is so inspired!

gorgeous and creative work! ..