For various reasons, I keep those projects close to my chest - at least until the time I am ready to publish them all as a single body of work. Thanks for asking, though.

You really don't need thirty years to find your way. It may come to you suddenly, tomorrow... 

Getting such a late start, I hope I have another 30 years to find my way!

It would be a pleasure to be able to view some of your personal work, if you would be willing to share a few pieces.

Your association to the contrast between feminine and masculine is something I didn't originally see, but it's been mentioned on other forums as well! Perhaps it was an unconscious intention. 

What I did intend was:

* The idea of peeking into someone's private life, including the medicine cabinet.

* The layering of concrete reality and suggestive associations.

What originally caught my eye was the reflection in the mirror, and I probably should have stayed with simply that (instead of conceptualizing).

There is a whole lotta room for artists using photography as the basis from which they come out, going towards graphics, illustration, even painting (I mean painting using real canvas, real brushes and real paint, not digital painting). I, for one, am very interested in using my photography for illustration, collages and composites. I experiment quite a bit with that. Since the late 70s, I have been keeping a book of my projects and adding to it throughout all those decades. Until now, I just scratched the surface in realizing those projects. Many  dreams, philosophical thoughts and such esoterica never had been put in words by me - not to mention putting them in images. But I'm getting there. It is my most personal and treasured work...

I'm sure one day you'll see clearly what you want to do with your photography. Anybody who treats their hobby with passion, gets there. Unless they start working professionally as a photographer . Usually that is the end of passion and artistic creativity and the start of a rat-race and conformity (but not always, so there's hope).

Thank you very much for your feedback, eob.

I agree this image is more along the lines of graphic art, than photographic...

Even as your comment makes me question again what that means, and where I want to go with my photography. 

For me, this is definitely an ambiguous collision of "truth" and "emotion" in what you've created.

I'm intrigued by your approach, and enjoy that you show us some of the seams or separations that define the interaction.

Overall, though, it doesn't hold together for me. I don't believe it enough to weave a story among the characters, yet at the same time wonder why you're deliberately showing the artist's hand -- and am unclear about that statement.

Ambiguous, indeed.

Ahhhh.... well you see, there was so much post-processing necessary to create this story that I was still sort of curious about a technical discussion regarding the imagining of the image above from the image below.... 


It was Ansel Adams who said that the negative is the score but the image is the performance.

After the Lomo/Holga trend, now is the time for the phone-camera trend. Sorry, I won't comment on that, though.

This is the kind of image that should be viewed in much larger size in order to be fully evaluated and appreciated.

Nevertheless, I like both the composition and the technique you used. It is certainly your own Corvette. Chevrolet designers have nothing to do with it. Would they hang this picture on their corporate wall? I doubt it... What's a chi-chi rich salon? 

First off, some philosophical comment: I do not agree that the truth is universally objective. Truth differs from a Democrat to a Republican, from rich to poor, from a victim to a victimizer, from a woman to a man, from a child to an adult, etc., etc., etc... In my view, the truth is just as subjective as is the emotion. So, building on that, I will have to assume, that what artists do is an interaction of truth and emotion which often ends up as an ambiguity. Sorry for twisting your statement this way. ( )

I can see at least two kinds of emotion in this photo. Ambiguity? Yes, I can see that, too. The truth is more difficult to extract, though.

Since you have posted this entry also in the Post-Processing Techniques category, I imagine that you expected comments on your technique, as well. Your dramatic colors are certainly eye-catching and most likely intended to enhance the emotional content. I got nothing against that. But, to be honest, I visualize this photo in black&white and I think that it would have more impact that way.

Well, I think that this photo belongs in the ART PHOTO category, because there is not much to discuss about post-processing?