a very creative photographer ...

His photos have been posted here before Paul though not the precise link you gave - I agree amazing photos
 
Interesting for the first few images, but that style wears thin for me really quickly. I start looking at the photographs for how well they hold up as images without the motion blur and some of them work but lot's of them don't do much for me.

Worth a look though...

-Ray
 
Hmm if you don't like em you don't like em, but its a bit odd to judge them for how well they stand up without the technique and style in which they are shot.

Its a bit like saying your b&w street don't stand up if you imagine them as being colour landscapes. Doesn't make sense!
 
Had a look, liked one or two as stand alone images. The rest ? Not my cup of tea.
Creative ? That's a little subjective. I prefer the work of some members of this forum more, including yours Paul.
 
That's a kind thing to say, but I think there's a difference between preferring someone's photographs and the creativity of the photograph (or photographer).

Titarenko seems to me to be putting a technique directly into the service of a particular vision of place(s). There's an idea behind the photographs, or rather a nexus of ideas, I'd say - social, political and psychological.

When I look at my photographs, and think about how and why I take them as I do, I couldn't possibly say that they reflect a social or political vision, and I'm inclined to view them as looking rather "samey" in the way that you and others seem to feel about Titarenko's in fact!



anyhoo, as I said before, if you don't like 'em you don't like 'em ...
 
Hmm if you don't like em you don't like em, but its a bit odd to judge them for how well they stand up without the technique and style in which they are shot.

Its a bit like saying your b&w street don't stand up if you imagine them as being colour landscapes. Doesn't make sense!

That's not really what I'm saying though. My point is that it's an interesting technique but not that many of them stand up as images to me. Beyond a few, the ONLY interesting thing about them is the long exposure technique, and that's not enough IMHO. The analogy to my B&W street work would be if someone said they liked my B&W processing but the images just didn't work for them as images and the processing by itself wasn't enough to make em work.

-Ray
 
@Ray - Well ok that's clearer but not how your original comment read to me.

Nevertheless, despite the clarification, I still disagree ... And think they bear close and lengthy viewing without loss of interest or value
 
I like some of the individual shots but by the time I got to City of Shadows I was over it. However, there are some circumstances in which I like the technique. I remember seeing just one shot of a person leaning on a wall (Melbourne, New York, god knows where) and the crowd moving around him/her. I always wanted to try that myself but have never got round to it. I do think its something which is special enough to not do for every shot.
 
Well, no, I again rather disagree.

If he had 7,447 pictures on Flickr that all used exactly the same technique I'd agree that he'd be overusing it.

On the other hand, here we have a photographer that has a point he wants to make and makes it clearly, and with a certain economy.

I'd also note that he seems to be a photographer who assembles his photographic corpus for printing and gallery viewing, rather than most of rest of us who slam it all on FLickr (or whatever) and hope for the best, and I'd expect one to have a differently modulated response when seeing them in the flesh.

Roger (ReD) posted a link to some landscape work by a UK photographer the other day which garnered almost universal "wow how inspiring" responses from the community ... while I was the sad old git who didn't like them :rolleyes: ... but I'd be prepared to put my scepticism on hold if I were visiting a gallery to see them in the flesh (or ink or silver or whatever)

Still ... if you don't like 'em, you don't like 'em
 
Sue what on earth prompts you to say that?

Where in anything I have posted have I said anything to suggest you or indeed anyone else is not entitled to an opinion, or not entitled to disagree with anything I've said?
 
That's a kind thing to say, but I think there's a difference between preferring someone's photographs and the creativity of the photograph (or photographer).

Titarenko seems to me to be putting a technique directly into the service of a particular vision of place(s). There's an idea behind the photographs, or rather a nexus of ideas, I'd say - social, political and psychological.

When I look at my photographs, and think about how and why I take them as I do, I couldn't possibly say that they reflect a social or political vision, and I'm inclined to view them as looking rather "samey" in the way that you and others seem to feel about Titarenko's in fact!

Agree 100% I look at City of Shadows and, besides thinking about technique (I think that there is something more than just long exposure going on here, maybe an intermittent strobe of stacked exposures, otherwise I don't think you'd get the hands on the rail.) I ask myself, "what is Titarenko trying to say?" There are ideas of motion here obviously, but also idea of temporary/permanence in the handrail shots and ideas of the mass of society, almost like ants, in other shots, particularly looking up the stairs at what appears to be a building or subway.

The sameness of style and technique (or voice as some might say) is actually what many are taught in art school-to find something that works, that speaks to you as an artist, and explore the idea for many years if not a whole career. That singularity of vision is what establishes an artistic identity and what you become known for. There are very few Picassos out there, able to try many different things and be brilliant at all of them.

I think that's what is missing from some amateur photography-this idea of a voice, of a way to see the world and capture it. That video of Martin Parr posted a couple of days ago reinforces this idea. Parr said, "Ascot has what I want....Life is weird…it's so much easier to see in a situation like this than in a supermarket." An amateur, on the other hand, might go to Ascot and, without a voice, take "nice" photos of people in fancy clothes and horses racing about. Parr is not aiming for "nice" and neither is Titarenko.

This is where my photography journey is taking me as well. I'm less interested in taking pretty pictures than I used to be, although I still do it for the motorcycle stories. But at the gallery reception last weekend, I got into a heated discussion with an aerial photographer about what my quarry photo (and caption/description) was "saying". That was the most satisfying part of the day for me.
 
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