The image is selective in color. The shot was made with the Canon 5D and I turned it into B&W. I masked through to the original color image to bring her skin tone back to her face. I did this for purely aesthetic reasons. I had no intention to stick closely to any photojournalist line of ethics. For publication with a newspaper or any source that requires different guidelines, I have a black and white and color version ready to use. One of my favorite photographs by W. Eugene Smith, “The Wake” (1950) shows a woman in the center staring at the deceased. In fact during the exposure of the image she was looking at the photographer. Mr. Smith later re-directed her gaze to the deceased through dodging and burning. knowing this never distracted me away from the truth of the image for me and my appreciation. Its always been an interesting debate concerning image manipulation. Even making a lens choice is in one manner manipulating the moment a photographer captures. As for my image, I’m glad many like it and have made a connection personally with it. Photography for me is meant to move people emotionally in any manner.

Thanks for the comment, there will be more entries but the blog is not my priority at the moment.

Best,

best, audrey

However, having said all of that, I really enjoy reading all of this:-)

David… Have you seen my question regarding the “multimedia” submission? The way the submission page is set up it doesn’t work for “multimedia” submissions. If you provide an email address where we should send the authorization for you to look at the work that we upload somewhere online, than you could see the work… For example, I just uploaded something to Vimeo page and it is “private”, I can share it with you but need an email address to send the authorization to. Perhaps that could be the way to submit these “video” pieces?

If I read the caption I see the word ‘controversial’. That, combined with my own knowledge of the Chinese/Tibetan situation lead me to think what I wrote. Of course nobody has to agree with it, nor do I think that the photographer was going for it.

I don’t think that we need ‘super’ (whatever that means) or poignant pictures decipting a situation, sometimes also subtler ones work. Depends of course on the knowledge of the viewer about a certain subject.

Thanks for your thoughts :)

of course everyone will strive to make happen any change to this existing format optimistically, and of course the cup is always going to be half full… but there is a swell of energy unique to this place and this space that is entirely instigated by the images and essays.

i hope any alternative to this existing feature will allow this energy to be rechanneled with the same degree of intensity :-)

Best Wishes,

Joe

;)

happy new year all.. hope your christmas and new year was good..

As for changing the format and not “subjecting” essays or singles to comments directly, I find the current format the most interesting thing about BURN. Otherwise you end up with just another online photography magazine. It’s the in-the-face interactivity that I find interesting.

you make such a good point…and while you are making this point, i was in fact considering the wisdom of having featured essays or singles subjected to comments at all….normally in a magazine it is fine to have a blog where readers can comment, but to have specific pictures or essays directly blogged may not be such a good idea…the amount of original content created specifically for BURN is going to grow…whether or not the discussion remains as is will be decided soonest….

cheers, david

Joe

I have to say that I represent my own modern vision of solipsyzm. I hope it will give you answer for your question.

Best wishes,

Mike.

everyone’s heard the quote “The unexamined life is not worth living.” …Socrates said it. does everyone know the circumstance of him saying this?

he said this at his own trial for heresy. Socrates was actually on trial for what we would later celebrate to be the Socratic Method. Because Socrates encouraged his students to challenge the accepted beliefs (much as we are doing now) he was actually sentenced to death. he carried out his own execution by drinking Hemlock Poison.

even when Socrates was offered exile, he still felt death was better than a life ‘unexamined’. One of Socrates students was Plato, and one of Plato’s students was Aristotle; each were members of communities not entirely different than this, each with loads of questions, and i suppose sometimes they participated themselves, and other times they were in the room when others asked questions, that when answered would lift their own ideas or help them to better shape a more important next question.

now i don’t think we should all be philosophers, but is it silly to suggest we should all behave like students while we participate here on Burn?

or should we just accept the images here as dogma? should we just accept them as Joni has mentioned to have an ‘Authority’? Should we, as Joni suggested in the past, kill off the comments under the images and the essays and reduce the chance for challenge and discussion?

i know Joni and others may base their no-commments feelings based on the concept of a printed ‘magazine’ but the concept of a magazine has to be enlarged to the concept of a community of readers AND members, the concept of pictures in a magazine has to be expanded to a concept of participation. You can find loads of traditional magazine concepts over here:

http://www.magazinedeathpool.com/magazine_death_pool/

i guess i hope we don’t accept things as the ‘authority’ once they show up here. i hope we challenge everything about them, especially if it relates to the prevailing wisdom. maybe some of those challenges will lead down a dead-end street, but most won’t.

and luckily no one will force David to drink Hemlock for putting us up to this effort.

just my opinion of course.

..

I think I agree about the selective desaturation (leaving color in the woman’s face). However, I am a fan of desaturation of color throughout an image. Pieter Ten Hoopen does it quite well: http://www.agencevu.com/photographers/photographer.php?id=167