perjantai 19. helmikuuta 2016

World Press Photo 2015

I´ll spend some time with WPP 2015 before moving back to finnish "photojournalism" competition.
First I show You the winning picture and use two different settings of histogram. The main winning picture is grey and bland. One may see details in darkest shadows which is unnatural.  There is very little tonality at night, shadows are dense and black. So I see the winner as a fake considering the technical execution. When I bring closer to each other the endpoints of histogram, the pictures starts to breath. It could be even more dense all over to make it more dramatic.
It seems that photographic expression, using black and white ( or grey tones) has gone missing deeply. 25 years ago this could have been rejected because of bad technical performance.
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What is terribly saddening,  are the racist comments all over the world, that started to appear, when the winner was pronounced. I´ll check some of those and get back here and to You later today.
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( English is my third foreign language after swedish and french, so do not expect hemingwayishly fluent text. Sorry for it. )

Scrc and citation for critics only, picture and copyright Warren Richardson.











4 kommenttia:

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

For my point of view the tonality of the image is quite comparable with the high iso ( ISO 51200 and beyond) image samples taken on night time. Due the small differences of intensity of light between shadows an lighted areas on the night the extremely high gain on the sensor should produce such a flat images.

Jore Puusa kirjoitti...

Yes. But should the photographer show his work so flat. When I think of times of film the negative was something and the print was the final product. The print had to have black...and white areas. If it was totally grey and flat it was considered as fault. Night is not what we see here. Night is dark, with some highlites in areas where torches etc have effect.

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

Miksi tämä on ylimalkaan mustavalkoinen? Kuvahan on tietenkin alunperin värillinen ja sen muuttaminen mustavalkoiseksi on esteettistä kikkailua. Ihan sama asia kuin Koutaniemen silvontakuvat, miksi nekin olivat mustavalkoisia ja tekotaiteellisia? Reportaasista ja jonkilaisesta totuuden tavoittelustahan tässä on kuitenkn kyse.

Turning original color captures into B&W is nothing more than pseudo artsy false aesthetic. If the photograph is originally in color, like they all are nowadays, it should be published in color. Editorial photography with not pretensions of truth are another matter.

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

Are there anywhere mentioned the names of these refugees, or more information about them? They seem to became a big group of anonymous people.

Photo works better with the higher contrast. From the face of the father you can see despair, confusion. Propably the child makes the whole picture, without it would be weaker.

Ville Nylander