I understand what you were trying to do, to emphasise the boy, but I don't think it works! I hate the fact that you've beheaded the Father because surely Dad is the force in this picture - taking his son to the ceremony. I also found the two half people pulling my eyes to the edges of the frame. I think there needs to be some darkening of the light jackets etc but I really would have liked the opposite view - the faces of the Father and son.

Viewing the image as is shown, although it is clear that the child is dressed in a special way, it’s
necessary to read the photo’s title to find out why as it does not come from the image. May be
something is missing in the picture to indicate what it is. Regarding the image itself, I would have preferred that the father hd been complete and
the rest of the scene even more concentrated, removing parts of people on both sides.

I hope you had a good trip to Turkey.  Regarding this image, although I can see what you were trying to do with the emphasis on the subject child, I am a bit bothered by the cut-off people, particularly the half a person on the left.  I’m wondering if you left the people in, but just used some selective dodging and burning for emphasis whether that would be less distracting?

     You really need the subject to be looking into the camera instead of walking away.  He might have posed for you if you asked -- quite often subjects are very willing to pose for a photographer and then you would have a much better photo. 

The story is more interesting than the image, and one would need to know the story to really appreciate the image.  Well done photographically, but I think you’ll be limited in the number of venues where it can be entered or displayed.

Greetings to everyone. I am pleased to meet the study group members and anyone else who reads this.

I am 63 years old, working as an information technology consultant. I am married with three grown children. We live in a close-in Maryland suburb of Washington, DC. I started shooting in my 20s with a Minolta SR-1—a precursor to the better-known SRT-101, but without any meter. I used a hand-held meter at the time, and had my own b/w darkroom. I was very much a novice in those days.

Then life intervened, and getting married and raising a family claimed my time. However, I always took photographs, read books about photography, looked at photographs, and went to photography exhibits and museum shows. I was always interested in what made a good photograph and why it had impact.

Now that my children are grown, I have taken up photography more intensively. In 2005, I purchased my first digital camera for a trip to Laos and Cambodia. I wanted a smaller, more portable camera, and that was a Sony Cybershot DSC-W1. It had manual control options, and I often shot with a wide-angle add-on lens. I shot over 5000 images with it in the next four years, until it recently broke. My next camera arrived last week—a Canon G10, the largest and most advanced of Canon’s “pocket” cameras. I have always advocated under-doing technology. I don’t feel there is a need to spend a lot of money when a fairly modest system will do. I view photography as being about the eye and the brain, and less about the equipment.

For me, photography is like an author “finding his voice.” The photographic equivalent is “finding your project.” For most of the years gone by, I had no “project,” but tried to take the best photographs I could. Three years ago, I found my project. I was traveling, and in an open-air market, I found myself shooting straight down into market baskets. What I saw was a colorful jumble of objects in apparently random order. However, this disarray does have an organizing principle—gravity, which determines how objects lie on top of and fit into other objects. To me, this has a peaceful effect, as peaceful as water flowing over stones. This became my “Jumbles” Project. Last year, I exhibited my Jumbles show at my local public library. Closely related to this, I am currently doing an extensive shoot in my local hardware store, and trying to persuade the “dime store” next door to let me in also.

As the Jumbles Project has developed, I also found several b/w projects—on architecture, and workroom “back walls.” One of my pictures from the architecture project—“Warehouse”—was selected for a juried community exhibition—I have submitted it to this group for my first participation. I am just getting going on these b/w projects, and that is why I have joined this group. I also joined a camera club and have had some success in the monthly competitions.

My wife and I travel extensively, especially to Turkey, her country. In addition to Laos and Cambodia and Turkey, I have recently shot in southern India and in China, including western China, where there has been recent rioting. Next January, we will be taking a trip to Senegal and The Gambia.

I edit my images with Photoshop 6.0, Photoshop Elements 6.0, and Picasa 3. I print at home on a Canon Pixma iP4600, a small three-color printer. I use Picasa 3 to drive the printing, and I find that it sends much better images to the printer than the Photoshop software that came bundled with my computer.