I guess I should set the record straight: the images here are all scanned from hand-prints made in two different darkrooms, for what that’s worth. There were no digital manipulations involved, only analogue ones. The borders are the result of filed-out neg carriers, not a photoshop plugin. As small gelatine-silver prints with the image centered on the paper, I felt that the borders aesthetically suited the mood I was trying to evoke with the work. I did question whether they served a valid purpose on jpegs, but since that was how I printed the images I decided to leave them in. Oddly, if I had cropped the borders out, *that* could have validly been called a digital manipulation.

Thanks again for the feedback, I’m delighted to be on Burn!

Glad you’re having fun. I’m havin’ fun

Forgive me for not commenting earlier on the content of this presentation. Firstly, congratulations for being published here. These images feel very personal. Personal to you, yes, yet they resonate with me as well. When photographs conjure up smells, and the feeling of cold air on my face, and flashes of memory of times past, I know these are wonderful, powerful images. Thankyou so much.

Yes, poetry.

i really comment any more on photographers work, rather preserve that now for in person over drinks…but will just say this:

it is beautiful and heartfelt and the girl on the swing tears my heart up….

so, for you mate, this is what i thought of when i saw the series, an Irish man singing about Irish children:

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

All through that Sunday afternoon
a kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blown chaff.

I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of newspaper
along its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to lift a shoal.

My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand in here in front of me
and take the strain.
-seamus heaney

and as for the questioning of the prints…or the use of a software….or for those who can’t see what these are in actuality, i’m stunned, really……have been using film for the breath of my photographic light, printing in darkrooms (none of which matters) and these ARE prints….

Stand in there and absorb the strain…

cheers
bob

i think i am coming around a bit on this one…the photoshop DOES make me wince a bit…i honestly did not even notice it the first time around…when i was reviewing the work…my eye does such a hard lock on imagery, as when i take a picture, and extraneous material is just “eliminated”…but in time, i do start the notice the “edges”…this tech just not needed here…the basic work is brilliant…

I don’t know, I see soul throughout this essay but personally I find it overwhelmingly overshadowed by a photoshop plugin. It’s probably because I know the Silver efex plugin inside out, I use it all the time. In fact I use certain fake borders for an essay I’m working on at the moment because the two subjects involved, want those frames included when I give back the photos.
In the end it doesn’t matter the content is brilliant.

I have to admit that I have always been uncomfortable with photographs manipulated to look like paintings. We can easily print on canvas now, but even in film days photographers would strip the emulsion and mount the photo on to canvas with a heat press. Some even added brush strokes with a clear acrylic paste made for that purpose. The whole implication is that the more a photo looks like a painting the more “artistic” it is.

In this case, the implication is that the more a photograph looks like it is old school silver based…grainy, blurry, too contrasty, the more artistic it is.

Dunno..

As I almost always do, I admire the entire presentation.

i echo Thodoris’ observation/question…

Mike.

gut feeling tells me it’s manipulation.. could be wrong though, and he’s just printing with many different negative holders…