I'm working on series of portraits with a Widelux: http://www.ravenvision.com/tomboys.htm

Comments welcome.

-- Peter Hughes (ravenart@pacbell.net), January 29, 2002

Answers

I've always wanted to have a panarama camera. I like "Michelle" and "Sara" a lot, although the contrast on-screen seems a bit low. I can't make up my mind about "Rebecca"; the composition is obviously very strong, and the tonality is wonderful, but the placing of her with her feet cut off seems wrong (maybe because I'm comparing it to the others). I do not think the curvature in the others adds to the effect.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), January 30, 2002.

peter, i wish you had some statement to go along with the pictures not necessarily a long winded artist's statement,but a brief group caption of sorts would be nice: something beyond just the title given on the page.

the images are nice though.

one in particular, rebecca, sort of has this tomboyish pose and manner, but her belly shirt sort of subjugates that masculinity to a sense of femininity. the line between male / female attributes becomes interesting in this photograph.

they become, in a way, akin to cross-dressers. the idea of the tranvestite as a border ground where ideas of what is male and what is female can be defined. a space of question.

if you continue the series, i would love to see more images.

-m

-- michael (mnm207@stern.nyu.edu), January 30, 2002.

Thanks for the comments.

I think the comment about cutting Rebecca off is right on. So, too, the comment about her femininity/masculinity. Good observations.

See a different shot of Rebecca here: http://www.ravenvision.com/images/rebeccatomboy2.jpg

I hope the curvature doesn't detract. In fact, I want to use the distortion to even better effect. I especially like the distorted house in Mary's shot; it looks like a spaceship or something. Very ominous.

I don't really have an artist's statement. Perhaps I should say that I have been taking a lot of photos with short telephotos, isolating women's faces, and I'm in the mood for some environmental work. Also, the photos I usually take are intended to be somewhat glamorous.

I'm still formulating a look for this series and any further comments would be welcome.

-- Peter Hughes (ravenart@pacbell.net), January 30, 2002.

The effect looks very good on all but Mary and Rebecca...and it's because of the fact that in both the structure appears to come forward in the picture much more than the models...noticably detracting from them.

-- T.S. Sullivan (thomas.sullivan@baesystems.com), January 31, 2002.

Very nice, sensitive work.

-- Ellis Vener (ellis@ellisvener.com), January 31, 2002.

Just from a visual standpoint, I never realized that you could setup Widelux pix so that the distortion was minimized! Cool.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), January 31, 2002.

Technically and compositionally, sarah is my favorite.

-- edward kang (ekang@cse.nd.edu), February 01, 2002.