Hey Gordon,
Just curious as to why you feel the use of fairly extreme contrast is a trap many young
photographers fall in to ?

While I tend to agree that the technique doesn’t suit all images in the piece I like the
harsh, aggressive mood that is created and I don’t really see much difference in similarly
styled pieces by Trent Parke or Alex Majoli that are generally well regarded

Love the work and I like the confidence that you have in your Black and White images, they are very stark; a style which I personally wouldn’t choose for this type of subject (it has its merits elsewhere in my opinion) but nonetheless a very good essay.

I loved coming across the one portrait of the man’s face covered with sweat. It was very nice to see something personal and simple like that after such heavy black and white photographs.

cheers and congrats on getting published here on Burn. Keep shooting!

A reminder that there is a dialogue part to burn, as there is a one comment per person rule under essays..please come on over to the current thread ‘time out’ to talk more.

Anybody interested in a different approach to football photography please check out Hans van der Meer!!! Highly, highly recommended!

Football is not my passion at all so I shoot football for money. I love ice hockey…
http://www.reimar-ott.de/IceDragonsHerford.htm

Best
Reimar

I thought some of the details of body parts got redundant. The guy getting a massage and the shower scene at the end didn’t work at all, like I’d already seen too much “body” as it was. It’s the life, as you say and begin to show, that I like most.

Congratulations on being published here.

Congratulations also on your excellent work.This work shows maturity and a wonderful eye for composition. I love what you are trying to convey here. I can see your passion, as well as your subjects passion. You have created a powerful story, and touched on an aspect of life that many of us can relate to, personal passion/obsession.

Your sense of composition is wonderful. I especially love 17, 20, and 22.

I have to agree with many of the comments here about the very high contrast . I’m afraid it is a trap that many young photographers fall into.

The story of men playing too hard at a sport they love well past the time they should have hung it up is not new. I think the photographer did a good job of avoiding most of the cliches (behind the net shot excepted). Still, like we see too often in similar stories, the entire exercise appears grim. There’s nothing in the essay to show that these men get any joy from the game, which presumably they do. If not, fine. Otherwise, I’d like to get more a sense of why they do it.

Like other commenters, I am bothered by the extreme contrast, but for different reasons, perhaps. The contrast, I think, makes the essay appear far more dramatic than is justified by the content. One could suspect that the photographer doesn’t have enough confidence in the story to let the photos communicate it on the merits of their content and composition. That’s a shame because it’s not a bad story and there’s some excellent content and compositions. I think there’s plenty of drama inherent in the story but suspect it would be better conveyed with a few more shades of grey.

So those are my quibbles. Good work overall.

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@Neven, si que importa la opinion de los demas…no solo la de DAH.

Thanks, Patricio

now, let me add something about your text, about journalsim/docu…
“not about football” – i know it sounds journalistically sexy to give such names to such stories… but do some deeper thought …
i have no doubts that most people in Real Madrid, from multi million euro players to team managers etc, are Enthusiasts of football… plus they are gifted and lucky…. these facts make their top football game “not only football” but a huge “entertainment business”….
it is in case of those people u photographed that it is “all about football”… cause they come after hard work as u say for their love to football (sport and social aspects etc).

One of the things that strikes me about Dmitri’s essay – and quite a few others that I’ve looked at – is how easily we fall into repeating visual tropes that have been laid down by earlier generations. The style (high-contrast, inky blacks etc) in this essay evokes some of Josef Koudelka’s early work, for example, and very much the work of Daido Moriyama in the 60s in Japan. At the time, there was something powerful, new and deeply impactful about the technique itself – it helped to show us something we hadn’t really seen before, married to compelling content.

What I fear (too strong a word, really) is that by employing techniques that carry such emphatic baggage, we’re actually encouraging our audiences to adopt the mindsets that those techniques imply. It’s difficult to look at these photographs of weekend soccer players, for example, without immediately making assumptions about the epic nature of their life-and-death struggle, etc. We’re being thrust into those assumptions. What results is perhaps a diminished, one dimensional view into what is undoubtedly a rich, multifaceted world.

I don’t want to be too harsh on you Dmitri – your images have a tremendous graphic impact and vitality, and it’s a very strong body of work. But I wonder if maybe you bring a little less “photographic history” into the work next time, and allow the story to define the technique a bit more? Let’s face it – if you’re shooting RAW, you can decide what “film” to load in the camera after the fact! In some respects I’d love to see the exact same images processed radically differently (if you shot on film – well, good for you, and my point is moot).