Blog Exercise 1: Photograph Critique

There are 3 websites that we have to look into to comment on various photographs.

Firstly, the World Press Photo website.

The pictures are copyrighted so I will only post links to the pictures and comment on them anyway.

Picture 1 ( Click to view )

This won the 2nd prize in the Spot News section . The messy and chaotic atmosphere was very well conveyed through the captured flying debris in the air. I personally like the blurred section of the photograph which provided a sense of sudden movement , something that is inevitable in such situations.

Despite the overall feel of chaos, the positions of the subjects , the victims of the water canon blasts, is relatively in a good position in the picture. Although there are only 3 people captured in the picture, one of them only had one arm captured in the picture. This gives us an impression that people are escaping in all directions and these 3 persons are not the only ones in that area escaping from the blasts.

Arte Laguna Website

Picture 2

I felt rather disturbed looking at the works of Elena Galanti. Nonetheless I found her pictures rather interesting in a weird way. I particularly liked this picture because of the stark contrast between the cold and warm side of the pictures just by altering the colour of the picture and of course, by using ice on one side of the picture to make it 'cooler'. I also like the fact that, despite the want to show contrast, both sides of the pictures, the warm and the cool, are fusing into one in the middle. The feeling of convergence arise when you observe how the colder colours blend into the warmer colours at the center of the picture.

After observing other works of this artist, I realised that she likes to use contrast and convergence as a part of her work. There are various pictures of people in black and white but seemingly close together. I find her style very interesting and is definitely an eye-opener for people who have yet to see unique works of artistic photography.