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or: "a mother's day"
had trouble picking a name for this image.....
i personally am very happy with how this image turned out...
any comments/critiques would be appreciated

Dee - wow! The only suggestion I would make is to crop the fence(!) out close the young boy

i did originally do that Chris....
i thought the image was getting too small as i already cropped some from the left of the image....

ill post it so u can see what you think...

here is a rough version of a crop...

Dee - I like the final crop very much as we only have 2 stories to encompass. The little boy and the woman - no distractions imparts a more powerful story and hence picture IMHO

Gee, I really surprised by the different emotions the two images have by just the crop... The second seems to be such a much more powerful image.

I agree, the 2nd shot is much more powerful. Excellent catch.

Regards
Meicw

Excellent photo. I like the 2nd one better.

Cheers
Alex

At first I wasn't so sure about the second crop as I like the "leading in" quality of the fence in the first image..

Actually, i'm still undecided. All I know for sure is that this is a brilliantly moving and evocative image.

Liam =]

I agree with Chris and the others, the 2nd photo is stronger, great shot.
I'm left wondering what the adult in the photo looks like, not sure if that's a good thing or bad. I would probably like to see a photo with the full adult but I suspect that when put side by side I would still pick this one.

you all dont think that b/c this was taken on a pier (boardwalk) the fence adds to the image? i just find that the cropped one is too small..cropped to small....?

i dunno

had troubles with it....hmmmmm.....
i agree that the fence is a bit distracting tho..maybe i should try to remove just a touch of it, but not all???

i also thought the fence kinds of gives a feel of trapped to the child as well....

I think I prefer the first image... It's such a powerful image...

I can understand why you went with B&W, but I would have thought it would work nicely in colour as well... I'm sure that the woman is very colourful and would still play off nicely against the little boy...

I'm assuming that this was shot in Mexico...???

Dee - I think it comes down to what is the message in this pic. To me the message is represented by the little boy, sitting in a foetal type position with a very sad look on his face. This is enforced by the woman having her back to him and NOT showing her face. The cropping just enforces the subject of the pic which IMO is the boy.

The cropped image shows the minimalism of the image which was a movement formed in the 1950’s to emphasise extreme simplification of form and colour.

leek:
yes in peurto vallarta along the boardwalk just b4 dusk...

we actually ended buying a lil doll from the lady...but just b4 we gave her the money, her third child (a cute lil girl, just a bit older than the boy) came running up to help with the transaction...her mom was trying to teach her how to take money and give the product to the customer...

i think the little boy was bored to death, that is why he looks so sad...

...and the other child on her back was asleep through it all...

leek:

to me, the message is the mother caring of her family, teaching them how to make money, and doing what she can to provide for her kids...
obviously poverty is one of the main themes here....

and yes, this pic looked great in colour, but b/c of the bright happy colours, it was better in black and white, helped change the mood.