Found those negatives and scanned a few... to get from a technical point of view reasonable results out of them was so easy. I remember hours and hours in the dark room, now just some levels and curves that's it.

With this image as a young student, I won the first price in a competition, it still has some charm to me therefore worth to share some of my very old work here.

This year's juror is Michael Johnson is a Professor of Art at Murray State University and Director of "Magic Silver", one of the largest international juried photography exhibitions. Johnson has been teaching photography at MSU for 37 years.

The Paducah Photo '10 Exhibition will be held at the Yeiser Art Center, 200 Broadway and will run from June 19 through July 24.

My contribution:

More information on: http://www.theyeiser.org/

What makes it possible to feel a decisive moment without those elements?

One part can be found in the light... the light here is something like the saying that you can not step in the same river twice...

On the other hand we're left alone with the question if there is someone out there in the light. Will the person show up in the image in a moment or did someone just disappear... you never will know what I saw.

The decisive moment solely exist in our imagination, we see something what is not there: an imaginary decisive moment!

Syria - Deir Samaan (Monastery of Simeon) - May 2009

This portrait definitively is more soft and less intense as the previous one.

The girl wears traditional Thanaka face paint which is worn as decoration and sun block.

Enjoy!

I met this homeless boy on the fish market in Sittwe, it seems he was not really welcome there... He was shy, afraid of the adults, isolated. It took me some time to convince him to pose for a portrait at this unfriendly place. He was standing there with some dignity, showing a difficult life. Besides some friendliness he got some money, at least that morning he must have had a good start in the day.

I worked hard on my b&w technique, my target was to not have such a clean digital image with just good tones. The final image has some (digital) grain, toning and I am happy about the sharpening result.

Normally I am not the one to talk about technique but I found some great hints last days:

- The sharpening workflow is described at Earthbound Light.

- The (digital) grain was taken from Nikos Kantarakias.

- The concept for toning I found in the blog of George Barr.

Grain was applied after the sharpening, I think grain should not be sharpened.

Thanks for the inspiration!

During the Syria trip I visited a small village with Beehive houses (one on the background of the building), it was empty and nobody seems to be at home. Then the girl showed up and waved to come in for a tea.