For the past few weeks, I have been covering various Pro-Palestine rallies and demonstrations in NYC. I have up a rough edit of my work here.

Pro-Palestine Rally, NYC 2002

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), April 13, 2002

Answers

Excellent,the real world.Full of impact, and colour adds.

-- Allen Herbert (allen1@btinternet.com), April 13, 2002.

I hope you find a wider audience for these meaningful images than this board, they deserve to be seen. Well done.

-- mark lewis (mark@markpix.com), April 13, 2002.

Best work i have seen of this type.

-- chris c lloyd (cclloyd@talk21.com), April 13, 2002.

i think the shots are ok. nothing terribly special. i definitely would edit out some of the ones that are very underexposed. they all seem to be underexposed except for a few of the soft-lit daylight shots (these were the keepers in my opinion). nothing earthshaking as a whole, but this event has great potential. keep covering it and report back with some more tightly edited shots. like the style a lot.

-- angelia (rubby@stonehouse.com), April 13, 2002.

No faults. Most shots give plenty of meeling and the messages are obvious. Meaning that he images have IMPACT!!!!

Something lacking in my own photography at the moment.

Excellent work

-- Kristian (leicashot@hotmail.com), April 13, 2002.

Thanks for all the comments and critiques, so far. Pro-Palestine rallies are still going on throughout the city, so I'm not done shooting yet. Angelia, I agree a tighter edit is necessary. Please consider this set of photos a work in progress.

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), April 13, 2002.

Richard, you did a nice photojournalistic job there, but the pictures - as full of impact as they are - are definitely underexposed. Just curious: what meter and what film did you use?

Keep on doing this. It's good. Thanks,

Olivier

-- Olivier Reichenbach (olreiche@videotron.ca), April 13, 2002.

There are several strong images, particularly among those that show the expressions of the protesters. In general, those simply recording the messages on the signs are much weaker. I agree that the scans are a bit murky--many of the photos would benefit from curves adjustments to pull more detail out of the shadows and midtones.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), April 13, 2002.

Top level photography, IMHO. But at this level any weakneses are too evident. I'd subscribe angelia's and Mike's opinions on editing needs / conveniences.

Thanks, Richard. Please let us know more of your work.

-Iván

-- Iván Barrientos M (ingenieria@simltda.tie.cl), April 13, 2002.

On the issue of the general murkiness of the photos, I think there are a couple reasons for that. First, there were definitely pictures that were simply underexposed -- due to a couple major mistakes on my part at the time of the events (wish I could blame AE!). At all the events, the light would change very dramatically (suddenly dropping 3 stops, for example) and I got a little too distracted by the event itself and could have paid closer attention to the light changes. Second, I'm still getting the hang of scanning and color correcting in Photoshop, so it's a matter of improving my digital workflow. The 8x10 work prints "pop" more than onscreen, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement.

Technical details: M6/M4-P, with 25/35/50 lenses. I used Portra 800, rated at 800 and 3200 (big mistake pushing it 2 stops, but I hadn't done it before, so I thought I'd experiment a bit). Negatives then scanned at 4000 dpi.

Again, I appreciate the comments from everyone. Very helpful.

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), April 14, 2002.

Richard:

Remarcable attitude at telling to us what was wrong on your part and easing the technical details.

Thanks !

-Iván

-- Iván Barrientos M (ingenieria@simltda.tie.cl), April 14, 2002.

Oh, I left out one part of the technical data: I used a Sunpak 1600 flash for the night shots. It's a bit anemic, so I'm considering getting an SF20 for more power and control (of course, I'll lose the TTL function with my non TTL-cameras).

Ivan, I try to take responsibility for my mistakes -- after all, I won't learn a damn thing unless I learn from them.

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), April 14, 2002.

Oops. That last sentence sounded weird. Meant to say that I won't improve my photography unless I learn from my mistakes.

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), April 14, 2002.

Nice shots. May I ask what software or tool, if any, you used in building your website? It's very nicely done.

-- Tse-Sung Wu (tsesung@yahoo.com), April 15, 2002.

Tse-Sung, I used Photoshop for image processing and I designed the site in Dreamweaver. The idea was to keep the site as simple as possible, so the focus would be on the photos.

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), April 15, 2002.