Allowed to be nervous, yes. Need to be nervous, no. Very good work.
Slight critique: I would suggest just a little more contrast in the right side. The tail of the d especially looks a little washed out.
Jason
Very nice come out. I do agree with Jason. By the way, miss you Jason. Maybe some gamma correction, contrast, something to help out the haze, but very nice find and shot all together. Another person to look out for once you get exposed to the learning curve you will be competing against. Keep it up
Welcome! Don't be nervous, this is a really nice group of people. I'm relatively new as well and I've gotten very good feedback and continue to grow.
I like this image a lot, it's kind of spooky (but then I was raised Roman Catholic and find the church kind of ominous, especially after a trip to Rome!), thought provoking ... I'm not so sure I get the connection to "black and white" other than it is a monochrome image though. I'm not sure, however, if the subject is supposed to be "black and white" or just the processing of the photo. I do believe it's subjective ...
It's a very good pic but I think that making it horizontal would be better, at least from my PoV. I mean, I can't see any advantage to the vertical orientation.
Thankyou for the open and warm welcomes. It's a big help to a new bee.
@Carolyn, I've found a few levels of thought occurring as I've developed this.
Firstly, it's black and white. A grayscale running from pure white to pure black.
My initial thoughts as i put this image together focused around bw photography, and how it's sometimes conveyed as pure or 'sacred' (maybe not around here but there are such places :-) ) It's a very old form of photography that could also be considered to be in it's afterlife, so a gravestone seemed apt.
Later thoughts(gets hazy here, you're warned) include black and white opinions held onto, religiously perhaps, and leading to decay, death and destruction, there's probably room for "set in stone" to be used about now. You could also reverse that, and see that the centre ground, between extremes and using parts of each to make life the best for all as a 'sacred' ideal worth holding, even into death.
I'd like to hear any other readings that occur to people.
@Yakim I looked at it horizontally, and again after your comment, but there's something about the lighting that didn't add up for me(I suspect it's the highlights in the bottom of the carving). Perhaps it's just because I know the stone is flat in the ground and was lit by a low winter sun.
