A selection of my Photography

[Almark]

First draft of an experiment. This for my daughter, who asked me for a selection og my photography. I found the music and liked the 'de da, de da, de da, de da' bit. So I am trying to use that 'de da' bit with some square format, mono work. The rest is colour at 1920x1200.

All feedback welcome!

Download Here

Updated again to fine tweek the music, and mac version added:

mac version

[colin hill]

Hi Mark,

Stunning photography. Really enjoyed your show. Liked the mixture of the black and white photos' with the colour.

Colin

[David Porter]

What makes a good photographer? Technical ability and artistic brilliance and you Mark have both in abundance (It is the artistic brilliance of which I am most envious). Add to that your ability in PTE and WOW! - what a show.

What a great start to Sunday morning, first Maureen's show and now yours.

[ContaxMan]

Who'd have thought that such a diverse mixture of images could hang together so beautifully? Splendid images and sympathetic music - tremendous!

[Lakelandlass]

First draft of an experiment. This for my daughter, who asked me for a selection og my photography. I found the music and liked the 'de da, de da, de da, de da' bit. So I am trying to use that 'de da' bit with some square format, mono work. The rest is colour at 1920x1200.

All feedback welcome!

Download Here

Mark - that was a very nice presentation, certainly my type of show. Recognised some of the pics, too. I particularly liked the subtlety of your very slow zooms and the way you have put it all together using different formats. You say 'first draft'. Can we look forward to more?

Maureen

[Lin Evans]

Hi Mark,

Cut,. wrap, it's a take! I don't think it needs any more refinement - looks (and sounds) great like it is.

Anyone who can make dead fish and bell peppers look great has my vote as a photographer!

Best regards,

Lin

[Bert]

Hi Mark,

I liked the photographs, I have seen your black and white pictures in your mono show and think they are in a class by itself. The color photographs did for the most part not reach that same artistic quality (in my opinion of course), and made the show therefore inconsistent . I Hope you don't mind me expressing this.

Bert

[dpletts]

Hi Mark,

I liked the alternation of colour and b/w photos, and using the music to emphasise the change was an excellent idea, although I found the music just a little monotonous and too soulful. I'm not qualified to comment really on the photography (its much better than mine, though), but I too found the b/w photos very pleasing (as I did in your previous mono show). I liked the textural quality which, in that respect, I think mono can often outdo colour. Having said that, there were some good colour textures, too. All in all, excellent. Thank you. More like this, please, as and when.

David P

[Barry Beckham]

Mark

You have some great images in your show and I found the music fine for the images.

I am not so sure about the monochromes and colour mix, but its not the colour mono mix that I don't feel is right, its the presentation of the monochromes. It feels like I am moving into another show when the first one comes up and I was surprised when it went back to full screen and colour. I don't know why, but the main full screen images look good edge to edge on a 16:10 monitor, but the square black and whites don't look so good to me. I feel I want to see a gap around the edge of each one at the top and bottom. Upright images that touch the edge of the frame never look quite right to me.

I would have them coming up over the top of the previous image, maybe with that image blurred and/or monochrome too. If you did make the mono images smaller and place them over the preceeding image, then you might need some type of framing to present the images well.

It falls a little bit between two stools. Is it an AV or a presentation of your images. I think it will sway back more towards AV if you do something a little different with the square monochrome images.

[Almark]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I had previously prepared two shows, one in colour and the other in mono (that some of you have kindly commented on above.) Of course I then got feedback suggesting it would be good see both in one show. I tried a few times but it never really worked, but recently I have been playing with the square format and thought with the right music is just might work. It was this piece of music that encouraged me to have another go, I really liked the soft 'de da de da' sections and I agree it is a bit soulful but I thought I had images that would suit.

I said it was a first draft as I didn't really spend much time putting it together, about an hour and most of that time was used trying to harmonise the flow of the colour images.

I had thought of making the square images smaller, but I wanted to use as much of the screen size as possible. I like Barry's suggestion of placing them on top of a blurred, darked, mono background. I will play with that now.

Is it an AV or a presentation of my images? My aim is both ;-)

[Almark]

Good Grief! That took almost as long as the first draft. I have updated the download, same link. I took the image that followed the mono ones and darkened, desaturated and blurred it. I then used these as the backgrounds for the 3 mono sections. I used the image that followed as it then blends from mono to colour. You will see what I mean when you watch the show. I also resized all the square mono images from 1200x1200 to 1100x1100 and added a small 2px stroke border.

I had to go out of my comfort zone (Capture NX) and use layers in Photoshop, so I now have 3 psd files, mono 1-3, just in case I need to go back and change things.

I think this works better, but of course I would say that!

Again, all feedback is most welcome.

Download here

Updated again to fine tweek the music, and mac version added:

mac version

[Barry Beckham]

Mark

I think you have moved the pendulem much further towards AV with your changes, but the out of focus backgrounds you have used, now thrown up some strong highlights that compete with your Black and whites Images. Those strong white areas need burning in and taking right down so your monochromes stand out with no distractions.

[Almark]

Yes I now see that, on review. it is worst in the the first set of mono ones. Thanks Barry, I will have to back and redo them, the bright area outside the image is a distraction. (I thought I might have got away with it:-)

[Almark]

Done, uploading now, same name same link.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated...

[xahu34]

... Is it an AV or a presentation of my images? My aim is both ;-)

Obviously, it is a presentation of fine images. The answer to the question if it is AV, will depend on the position of the person who gives the answer. Those (like me) who share the position presented here will say: It isn't. On the other hand: The most important question is: Do you like it for yourself?

Regards,

Xaver

[coopernatural]

Mark,

This is sort of awkward.I was going to say well done with the excellent AV.

With such an august body like the IAC downgrading it,I can't really go against their criteria.

Perhaps I could just cancel my IAC Polo Shirt as a protest.

Seeing as version 7 of PTE hasn't been released,Maybe it will be OK to say.

'Wonderful Slideshow Mark'.

Davy

[d67]

Superb and relaxing medley

Thank you for sharing

Patrick

[Almark]

Thank you all for the feedback on my slide-show.

[thedom]

It's a very good selection of photos, I really liked your slideshow but to be honest, I found sometimes frustrating to have no idea of what/where it is.

I am really impressed with your monochrome work !!

Could you give advices to have such a big contrast ?

Is it something you tune in photoshop ?

[dpletts]

Hi Mark,

I wonder if you might consider NOT using a transition between the end of a colour section and the start of a b/w section. The first b/w image should pop up when the music changes. I think this would make more of the contrast between colour and b/w. You could start to fade out the last colour slide first if you wanted. I think the transitions to colour at the end of the b/w sections would be OK to keep. Just as a general observation, slow transitions between slides seem to be very popular, but not always necessary, especially when trying to match slides with the beat of the music accompanying them. To that end, it is useful to have music at 120bmp or 60 bmp as they coincide with the seconds of the time line and thus much easier to align. Sorry if everybody already knows this.

David P

www.ambiflow.co.uk/DigiDaub

[Almark]

Thank you for the feedback. No; I did not know this and will carefully consider your points on my next revisit to the project.

[snapcam]

Hello Mark

Just had a look at your show and as usual your images are first class.

Now for the but, I appreciate that you are combining two sets of images Mono and Colour and to present them without some sort of

mingling defeats the purpose of the exercise. To achieve this effectivly there has to be some sort of transition between the two that does not jar the viewer

and I feel some but not all of your's do this,jar the viewer I mean.

I think an earlier comment was right to say that there is a danger of falling between two stools. I also think you achieved the aim of purely presenting images better when you

did seperate Mono and Colour sequences.

I think you know what my thoughts are in relation to a diverse set of pics with no linking theme ever being an A.V. They will always be a slide show.

Doesn't stop me enjoying the images though.