sweet dreams

Critiques [Translate]

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• leiju (1597)
• [2007-07-07 22:28]
• [2]

This is a nice green picture with a man standing in it. I am not sure it is as powerful as it could be though.

A few questions to ask yourself, perhaps. Why the title "sweet dreams"? It may be part of a larger collection of shots but when it comes to this alone standing post, the title isn't really self-explanatory. After all, one wonders what the man could be dreaming about and how come these dreams might be sweet.

You have chosen an interesting composition but perhaps haven't explored it quite as far as you could have. The man is almost in the middle, sort of lost between various more powerful spots. Had you had him a bit more to the left, the image would have become naturally more intense.
The black strips above and beneath are a good idea but they don't need to be so large. Either keep the image the size it is and make the black strips thinner or then make the image thinner and keep the strips as large as they are now.
At the moment the whole is a bit loose.

As for the man himself, without the note we have no idea of what is going on, and with such a title we get completely lost. The note is of course useful but to make the image more powerful it would have been good to wait for him to do a more clear-cut movement, perhaps bending down to pick something up, or to look at something. Now all we have is a man who seems to be walking in tall grass.

Don't get me wrong, it is a nice picture, but I allow myself to criticise it in such way as it is a simple one (in composition) and hence what could have been done differently is easy to discern. It is good to have such simple compositions as then you are able to fine-tune your own sensitivity to what feels right and what seems wrong... or rather what feels in place and what doesn't.

My favourite part about this shot is it's simplicity and the green that seems to be all that exists in this man's world.

Thank You for sharing this sight!
All the best,
Julia

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• fijiphil (1332)
• [2007-07-08 1:04]

On a purely graphical level, I love it - that endless sea of green, punctuated by this lone man. But as Julia pointed out, we can't make any emotional connection because we don't have any context to put him in. If we could see his face, we might be able to connect with him a little better.

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• teacozie (1369)
• [2007-07-25 8:47]

Yo Ershad!

I really like this idea of having minimal featues and letting the colour and the texture of the grass frame the man in the field working. Very nice.