I had just begun reading about zazen, or the Zen Buddhist practice of koan meditation when this challenge was announced. In one particular passage, Dogen-zenji recalls the exact moment of his satori, or enlightenment. He describes the event as a "dropping off, or letting go" of body and mind. While the pose I struck is not entirely accurate, I felt that it gave the photo an understated power that the traditional "lotus posture" lacked.
Statistics
Place: 51 out of 188 Avg (all users): 5.4926 Avg (commenters): 7.0667 Avg (participants): 5.2718 Avg (non-participants): 5.6272 Views since voting: 1151 Votes: 272 Comments: 18 Favorites: 0
I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on my photo. The comments were overall very helpful, especially to me, as I have just begun getting into photography. This was my first entry into ANY photo contest, and I feel very welcome here at DP Challenge. Thanks to all.
I very much like the lighting and symmetry of this photo. Maybe could've used just a little, tiny bit more lighting up near the face and upper body as you lose a little detail there. But overall, It's an interesting picture and a nice take on the challenge.
the composition works for me, however some different lighting would have worked beter, maybe a bounced flash off the celing to help light up the subject but still leaving the back ground darker
I like this a lot...except for the candles which I realize are important to the mood but their brightness is somewhat distracting since the eye keeps wanting to wander down there instead of on your focal point. Maybe red candles...? Anyway, what I do like is the man's pose, the halo affect of the lighting behind him, the red tones and the theme interpretation. I gave you an 8
Awesome take on the challenge. I actually thought of something very similar. I hope you get good scores, but from what I understand about peoples interpretation of the challenge from the forums and my own entry, you are probably getting some undeserved low scores.
My feeling about your picture:
I think you could have left out the light behind your subject to emphasize him a little more. The backgrounds competes for the attention of my eye a little. At the same time, I think the light behind is a decent idea, maybe just too much of it or something. The outline of the mat behind the bottom two candles is a little distracting as well. I am big about analyzing on where my eye goes in the picture. Good luck! 8
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