Sports is such a dominant aspect of American life that I wanted to show the propaganda used through out it. The statue reminds me of Russia's statues of Stalin and Lenin, and by making the perspective looking up so high I feel that the picture forces you to look up to the man. I also tried to use negative space to force the viewer to look at the subject.
P.S. That is Forrest "Phog" Allen who coached Kansas basketball for a very long time and is considered the Father of modern basketball coaching.
Statistics
Place: 84 out of 133 Avg (all users): 4.9730 Avg (commenters): 5.0000 Avg (participants): 4.7143 Avg (non-participants): 5.0921 Views since voting: 1262 Votes: 222 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
First of all you took this photo from under the statue and caused a distortion of the man. To me what stood out was his the rather large crotch! I know it isn't always possible to take a photo from directly in front and you have to take it at an angle but you can always move back and zoom in on the subject. In this case the photo of this statue is so simply to distorted cause you took it from an angle to close and left him with a large crotch and a peasized head.
Another distration that hurts this photo is the tree in the background is in too good of focus it would have worked better using a limited depth of field leaving the tree out of focus.
I do have to say though your focus on the statue was excellent. The detail is really good. Two things really hurt you here were first was the distortion of the man and the second thing was no one understood the photo. Possibly a different title would have worked better.
I loved your photograph. I rated as one of my top pictures in the contest.
To answer your question, "are they dumb or playing favorites?" The answer is they are not playing favorites.....I don't think they're dumb either....uninitated maybe, and certainly underqualified to judge photos critically.
All you have to do is look at the winners of almost every challenge. Almost everyone is a staged photo studio shot where you have complete control of everything. You control the background, the foreground, the colors, and most importantly, the lighting.
Photo studio shots are good.....I guess, if your trying to sell golf clubs on Ebay, but it doesn't really show the true capability of your photopgrahic skills. It's really quite canned, and mechanical.
I have to say that I am really disapointed in this score, and it makes me think that mabey I should stop submitting to the site. I don't understand if people are just dumb or playing favorites. I fully understood that nobody would know who the person was, but a statue is a extremly potent peice of propaganda no matter what it is about, here a sports figure, modern day gods in our world. I did think that people would see it as a statue for a propaganda and vote on its photographic quality, as it did fit the challenge, I bet the same shot with Lincoln, Washinton, the Pope, or the statue of liberty would have recieved much higher scores even if the quality was worth, regardless of the fact that they are equally peices of propaganda.
I'm not sure what cause the image is trying to promote, but it is a great photo of this statue. The viewpoint emphasizes the player's height. The trees and sky make a nice background.
Nice composition - the simple two part background compliments the sculture, brings out colors inthe metal. Makes him seem very grand to be looking up at him - the tree almost seeems like a cape flying out behind him.
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