Photo story of the week: The Purple Hour

Take a look the picture above, something like it !!!

yoss - you know the definition of discarded... right?

Sure do - but if Huck1953's discards are like this, his keepers must be sensational.

Waiting to see the discards or the keepers. Either way, must be pretty special.

More proof of what I said.

Well i'm afraid you have to be one to accept a 1,5 year old photo, a photo like this one, as the "photo of the week"

"Even the President of the United States has one special photographer."

Even? Even? What are you talking about?

Would you not expect the President to have an official photographer? (for security clearance alone).

Peoples complaints seem to be about the title of this article. It's not photo of the week. It's Erez's showcase. Its an advertorial.

If it was titled correctly, then the complaints would go away.

The other complaints seem to be about the standard of the work.

Again, justified, Erez is a competent landscape photographer. But so are lots of people. He produces generally mediocre work but there are some truly excellent photos on his web site.

You do realise that he is a DP Review contributor with the ability to post articles here? He didn't win some kind of competition, he posted his own picture with the subject "photo of the week", and with his advertising links below.

17 Feb 2016

It's throwback Sunday 😀

"Summer" in Iceland is somewhat of an oxymoron. It snows at least every two days somewhere on the island. Northeastern Iceland is relatively barren and somewhat warmer than the South. New snow and hoarfrost would be a change, and this photo captures the feeling of awakening to this phenomena well. The "Purple Hour" in Iceland lasts a long time, from 11p to past 2a in the Summer, then starts again early the next morning. That snow would probably be gone 15 minutes after sunrise.

Ed - There is a summer in Iceland! Iceland is only a few degrees cooler than the Highlands of Scotland, somewhere I know very well.

Yes, it can snow, and does snow, in both Iceland and Scotland in the summer, but nearly always at high elevations (although I've seen snow in Breamar in July!).

I've been in Iceland in the summer, the temperatures are very pleasant, in the 70s, and the nights were mild too. Again, like Scotland, Iceland has a low tree line due to a combination of cold winters and limited annual sunshine (the tree line in both Scotland and Iceland is about the lowest outside the Arctic at about 400 metres in sheltered areas and down to sea level at exposed areas.)

This photo was clearly taken in winter.

(and, no, there is no "purple" hour. Purple is not a spectral colour, there cannot possibly be a purple hour. The title is Erez just being pretentious)

Excuse me !!!! is 17 of February summer in Iceland ???????????
Cause that's when this photo is taken

exactly...

I dunno what Ed is going on about, Iceland clearly has summers and winters, as do all areas outside the tropics.

Well, this one is.

Gee Noah Placebo, I wasn't sure what your opinion was from previous posts. Good that you restated it again.

Azathothh !! what's really "surprisingly" is that there is an article with this photo as "photo of the week" on DPReview

Yeah, we could all do better couldn't we? Lotsa people criticising but how many of us could make a living as landscape photographers, like Erez does? He certainly isn't the best landscape photographer out there, but nevertheless he's pretty damned good. Some of his images (e.g. from Patagonia) look a bit contrived, but I wish I could do so well. I do agree with those who say that it would be nicer if we saw more work on dpr from other landscape photographers. How about it dpr?

Our tastes obviously differ. I've seen many inspiring landscapes taken in Joshua Tree NP, but these all look distorted, with very excessive use of the photoshop "ugly" plug -in.

No one gets paid, ok, so it must be a coincidence that each of these articles mentions his (quite expensive) Iceland workshops. Not that it bothers me. Maybe I'm just naive?

I'm not sure whether or not you're naive, but I do wonder whether you understand what 'paid' means. We do not pay Erez, and he does not pay us. As I said. As such, we have no problem with him plugging his workshops in his articles.

I like you, Barney, but don't insult people in the comments section of extremely strange articles.

This picture is terrible. If someone told me that they shot this on a rx100 I would congratulate them and try to subtly direct the conversation to a book on composition. A lot of his images are mediocre. I am not the only one who thinks so. It seems strange to a lot of us that a title like "photo of the week" is used for one photographer's work, especially when the photo looks like this one. I literally see 100 images that are better than this on Instagram every day.

Why don't you try to contact some of the people who post eloquent descriptions on their Instagram posts? Maybe some of the people here would be willing to submit an article about their best shot and the locations and techniques involved. I would happily write you a 1000 word article about one of my pictures and I'm sure 90% of the good photographers here would do the same.

"We're speaking to other photographers about similar 'picture of the week' posts and hopefully you'll see the fruits of those conversations appear on our homepage in the coming weeks."

No insult intended, but it is depressing to see a comment thread full of such unjustified conjecture and bile directed towards a long-time contributor who is is essentially letting us publish his work for free. You've said that you think a lot of his images are 'mediocre', but that is not a fact - it's just your opinion. And one that is not shared by a lot of other readers.

Barney, please go to Iceland in February (I'm sure Erez will cut you a good deal), take a decent point and shoot with you and I GUARANTEE you'll come back with MUCH better / more interesting pictures than the one this article is about.

Barney "You've said that you think a lot of his images are 'mediocre', but that is not a fact - it's just your opinion. And one that is not shared by a lot of other readers."

If you addressed peoples' points rather than point you think they made, you might make some headway.

A) Nobody here, when stating an opinion is pretending they are stating a "fact".

B) You have no idea about the opinion of "a lot of other readers". You know what people write here. People that contribute to threads are just a fraction of people that read them. But if they are representative (and there's reason to doubt they are not) then quite a lot of readers DO have the opinion that this photo is mediocre.

C) "who is is *essentially* letting us publish his work for free".
Essentially? Its free or its not. What is it?

I welcome your statement about allowing others to contribute to photo of the week and look forward to seeing them in the coming weeks, as I suspect many here do.

"Barney, please go to Iceland in February (I'm sure Erez will cut you a good deal), take a decent point and shoot with you and I GUARANTEE you'll come back with MUCH better / more interesting pictures than the one this article is about."

I have wworked with Erez for several years, presenting his images to the DPReview audience. I am in no doubt that I would fail utterly, if I had to compete with him as a landscape photographer. In Iceland or anywhere else.

His photos are good, unquestionably, but I don't really regard his craft as master-level.

Why, for instance, would you need to focus stack a scene shot at 16mm at 11 f-stop, in which the majority of the elements are at the same distance in the foreground?

Exactly, the foreground is just white snow. It reminds me of someone always shooting at f/22 where the foreground is just water.

Maybe because making things in a more complicated manner is more...professional ? ;-)

I'm sorry for the radio silence yesterday - we don't generally spend our weekend time policing unruly comment threads. I've addressed your (and other) concerns elsewhere in this thread.

@yake i love the photo and it is a beautiful scene no doubt. But youre completely missing the point many are trying to make in the comments here