Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.
Show rules for this event
Landscape Photography
I leave my hotel three hours before dawn, driving an old blue Ford up the coast in search of perfection.
The road is as dead as the night around me. In my rear view mirror, I watch as the curvature of the Earth hides the little homes of the seaside village where I stayed the night. Before long, I am alone with the rumble of the Ford's engine. My world shrinks to the glow of two headlamps and the cold, thin light of the stars outside. It is the most peace I've felt in weeks.
Half an hour up the coast, I pull off the road and into a deserted parking lot. There were cars here yesterday afternoon—only three or four, like little dabs of paint speckling a canvas. Now they are gone—the canvas is blank again. I park the Ford and turn off the ignition.
It only takes a minute before winter's chill is seeping through the car windows. I could leave the engine running a little longer, I suppose—use the heater to keep myself warm—but it feels wrong to ruin the night's stillness for my own comfort. Humans endured the cold for eons before the invention of cars and heaters. Surely I can put up with it for an hour or two.
I grab my flashlight out of the glovebox and check over my equipment in the dark. There isn't much: a beat-up 35mm Nikon I got from my father, a low-angle tripod, a granola bar to keep me awake. I consider bringing a couple extra rolls of film—I have plenty in my luggage—but I decide not to bother. If it takes me more than twenty-four shots to get this photo, I'll have already missed my chance.
The walk down to the beach isn't easy in the lingering darkness. I zip up my jacket as I climb out of the car, but a slow wind from the sea still leaves me shivering. Slinging my camera bag over one shoulder, I use the flashlight to guide me. There is no moon tonight, and clouds cover much of the sky. The old wooden boardwalk creaks and clatters with each step.
When I get to the beach, I turn off the flashlight and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I'll be shooting in low light anyway, and I need a sense of what my camera will be seeing. After a few minutes, I'm finally able to see them—a low line of spherical boulders, half-buried in the sand.
I pick my way across the shoreline, moving closer until I hit the water's edge. The tide is out this morning which lets me get within a few meters of the boulders. They rise out of the sea like little hillocks, each an island unto itself. Yesterday, in the afternoon sun, they seemed strange and beautiful. Now, in the darkness before dawn, they are a fragment of a fractured alien landscape.
The waves are slow and steady as they hit the beach. I set down my tripod where the sand gives way to water. I screw the Nikon into place, and fiddle with the camera's focal length and aperature width. It is still too dark to do more than guess at what I'll need. Then I unwrap the granola bar and settle down to wait. Nearly an hour passes before the first hints of light hit the horizon, far off in the east.
I've come with an empty roll, twenty-four unexposed frames, hoping that one of them might capture some shred of magic in the world. As the red light of dawn paints the clouds overhead, I go to work. I have twenty-four tries to get this right.
In the end, I only need two.
Despite what you may have heard, I'm not a misanthrope. I don't hate people, I just prefer when they aren't around. In that sense, it's a good time to be alive.
Humanity builds enormous edifices. Palaces, cathedrals, factories, shopping malls—grand temples to the God of the Age. Who can hate a species that produces such beauty? But if you've ever had the opportunity to visit one of these places at night, at a time when its normal operations have ceased and the building itself lies empty and abandoned, perhaps you'll understand me when I say that human creations are never more beautiful than in the absence of their creators.
The grandeur, the majesty, of a silent shopping mall cannot be overstated. Mile after mile of shop windows, all dark; the shadows of commerce caged inside and waiting, lifeless, for customers. It's as if you've stepped inside one of those old paintings by Willem Kalf, inhabiting it.
I've always loved photography, but at times I've envied the Kalfs of the world. Paint and canvas creates a certain derealization—a sense of distance that lets you look at the world through new eyes. Film shows the world as it is, with all of life's thick mundanity. How do you make a camera capture transcendence?
On the west coast of Africa, in what was once called Namibia, is an old German colony town called Kolmannskuppe. Two or three centuries ago, it used to be a part of the diamond-mining trade. Then, after the diamonds dried up and the desert began to swallow the town, it became a place for tourists. Once, I'd have needed a permit to travel here.
I take a swig of water as I hike across the sand to the old, two-story school. On my right, I pass a tall and crumbling brick facade. It reminds me of the tombs at Petra. The summer sun is a blazing ingot laid across the anvil of the sky.
A tan-and-white springbok, resting in the shade of one of the ruined houses, sees me and comes alert. It does not run. Perhaps it's forgotten to be afraid of humans.
I'm looking for a shot here, but I don't know what it will be.
The ground floor of the school is filled with sand, so I walk up one of the dunes to a second-story window. The glass is long gone, shattered by the winds and reclaimed by the desert. I push my way inside, and a few wispy splinters from the wooden window-frame lodge in my loose white clothing.
Sun-stained traces of green paint cling to the walls. When the first photographers came to record Kolmannskuppe, that paint was already flecked and peeling. I am far from the first, however. Far from the hundredth, or the thousandth. Perhaps I won't even be the last.
Is this what Calvino imagined, when he gave life to Marco Polo's tales? As I pass a stairway descending into the sand, I can almost imagine Argia below me. Clay students, going about their lives beneath the earth.
Ahead, a chunk of the school's brick wall has fallen inward and knocked out the floor of the hallway. I edge forward to take a look. The boards below me creak as I shift my weight. Through the gap in the floor, I find my target.
In the room below, less than a foot of sand covers the ground. A sapling camel thorn tree has somehow taken root here, its roots surely delving down through the school's foundations. Its branches are stunted and gnarled, but shoots of green still spring forth. Dancing between the branches is a restless dune lark, its mottled tan coloring a stark contrast to the tree. The rhythmic flutters of the lark's wings are the only sound in the empty school.
Carefully, I set my camera bag beside me and stretch out on the hallway floor. The boards creek again, and the lark pauses to stare up at me. I freeze, feeling my heart beat faster. Will it fly away?
It does not, and I get the shot I was after.
Humanity was in retreat long before the fertility collapse. Japan and the old nations of Europe stopped breeding at replacement rates in the 20th century. The Americas followed not long after, then many of the Asiatic countries. Still, some continued to grow. Ecologists and economists worried. When I was growing up, we used to hear a lot of talk about "carrying capacity" in schools: how many people the land could support.
By the time I was born, every major country—even the ones already in decline—had instituted some form of population control. Family size taxes, parental licensing, in a few cases even forced sterilization. You can imagine what it took for us to reach that point.
I'd just finished high school when the first reports of the collapse began. A sudden uptick in business for fertility clinics. A drop-off in hospital admissions for pregnancies. It didn't happen all at once, not like some lost plague coming to ravage us. It was generational, though it seemed to hit a tipping point with my generation. Too many couples where neither partner could conceive.
The population control laws were repealed when the extent of the collapse became clear. But the change came too late—new social norms were already established. Some people thought of children as a luxury they couldn't afford. Some thought of them as a sin against the environment.
Some just didn't care. I've never had a fertility test. The results wouldn't have mattered to me, one way or the other.
I am old, and my film is almost gone.
Morning fog fills the woods. My steps are sure—I've walked this path before. I always knew my journey would end here. I flick a lever on the Nikon and wind the film. A small window displays the number '23'. I have two shots left, and I know what they both will be.
A spring breeze caresses the air, but in the shadow of Pripyat it is always autumn. The first casualties of a disaster are often the smallest. Children. Pets. In this case, bacteria. Red and gold leaves litter the forest floor, even while green shoots of new growth fill the trees around me. The trees themselves are healthy, having learned to adapt to their environment. The bacteria that compost dead matter have recovered as well, but they remain oddly inefficient here. It can take more than two years for a fallen leaf to decay into new soil. Things die here, but they do not rot. The scent of the forest is alien, almost antiseptic.
I find what I'm looking for—a stand of strange black fungi tucked among the leaves. It takes me a good four minutes to judge how I want to frame the shot. The mist clings to the trees like an anxious lover, and I have time to be careful. Eventually I get what I've come here for. Black mushrooms mixing with green grass and red-brown leaves, all in a tight focus, with the dim shadows of tall, thin trunks rising out of the fog behind them. I'm sure the shot is excellent, though I doubt anyone will ever have the chance to develop it.
I wind the film, and the little window on the Nikon reads '24'.
Turning southeast, I begin to walk again. My goal is still many miles away, and my steps are slow these days. After another hour, the fog begins to burn off and the air warms with its first taste of sunlight. The land around me is quiet—not silent, but also not saturated with the typical sounds of nature. This place is like a barrel of water that's been tipped over and half-drained. More than a century later, it still waits to be filled.
As I approach the edge of the forest, I hear a voice call out to me. I stop and turn, shocked. How long has it been since I've seen another person? Weeks, at least. Never this far east.
A young woman in an embroidered linen dress stares at me. She stabs out a finger and calls again. Belatedly, I realize she is not pointing at me. She is pointing at the ground in front of me. I look down and find a small red ball.
The woman—probably in her late teens, now that I look more closely—calls out again. I catch a glimpse of two younger children, a boy and another girl, peeking out at me when they think I'm not looking. I reach down and pick up the ball, then begin to walk toward them.
Holding out a warding hand, the woman motions for me to stop and throw the ball to her. I frown, irritated. Instead, I tuck the ball under one arm and sit down with my back to a tree trunk. The woman frowns back, folding her arms across her chest. I figure she can't be that scared of me though, or she wouldn't have called out when she saw me. She could have simply let me pass and gone to collect the ball herself. I doubt I would have noticed her, if she'd wanted to keep hidden.
After a moment, I see her shoulders droop. She motions to her side and the two children scurry out from behind a bush. The three of them approach me together, speaking quiet words to one another that I can't understand.
When they draw close, all three stop. The young woman says something, and then the boy steps forward. He holds out a hand to me, unwrapping his fingers to show a tarnished old coin like the ones people must have used in these parts, many years ago. The boy can't be more than five years old.
Surprising even myself, I bark out a laugh. He thinks I want to barter with him? I shake my head, and then bounce the red ball across the forest floor. The boy uncoils like a whip, reaching down and grabbing it in a smooth, graceful motion.
I don't remember the last time I saw children this young. Has it been a decade? More? Surely there are still children in this world, but I avoid people when I can. There are no children in the places I travel. Or there were not, until now.
A rush of emotion tugs at me and before I realize it, I'm placing my eye against the Nikon's viewfinder. The image I see feels as perfect as any I've ever found. The boy is handing the red ball to the young girl—perhaps his sister—while the older one looks on. Is she their mother? She might be old enough. I cannot tell. Above, the sun shines through new leaves in the treetops. In the background stands a blue-painted cabin that I must not have noticed before. The boy smiles. The girl laughs. The shutter clicks.
I wind the film and pop open the back of the camera, pulling it out. Then I swing the door closed again, leaving the Nikon empty. I feel a moment of regret for the shot I'll never take, the last picture I'd wanted to add to my collection.
My bones creak as I stand. I place the Nikon back into its case. With a smile, I slip the camera bag off my shoulder and hand it to the oldest. She stares at me quizzically, and makes a gesture I don't recognize. "It's yours now," I say. "There's no more film, but maybe you'll find a use for it."
I know she can't understand me, but there is intelligence in her eyes. She says something in response. I nod and turn to go.
It was my father's camera once. For sixty-two years I've watched the world through its lens, searching for the alchemy that only exists between two perfect moments. As I tuck the last roll of film into my pocket and head west, I wonder whether I've been looking in the wrong place all this time.
The road is as dead as the night around me. In my rear view mirror, I watch as the curvature of the Earth hides the little homes of the seaside village where I stayed the night. Before long, I am alone with the rumble of the Ford's engine. My world shrinks to the glow of two headlamps and the cold, thin light of the stars outside. It is the most peace I've felt in weeks.
Half an hour up the coast, I pull off the road and into a deserted parking lot. There were cars here yesterday afternoon—only three or four, like little dabs of paint speckling a canvas. Now they are gone—the canvas is blank again. I park the Ford and turn off the ignition.
It only takes a minute before winter's chill is seeping through the car windows. I could leave the engine running a little longer, I suppose—use the heater to keep myself warm—but it feels wrong to ruin the night's stillness for my own comfort. Humans endured the cold for eons before the invention of cars and heaters. Surely I can put up with it for an hour or two.
I grab my flashlight out of the glovebox and check over my equipment in the dark. There isn't much: a beat-up 35mm Nikon I got from my father, a low-angle tripod, a granola bar to keep me awake. I consider bringing a couple extra rolls of film—I have plenty in my luggage—but I decide not to bother. If it takes me more than twenty-four shots to get this photo, I'll have already missed my chance.
The walk down to the beach isn't easy in the lingering darkness. I zip up my jacket as I climb out of the car, but a slow wind from the sea still leaves me shivering. Slinging my camera bag over one shoulder, I use the flashlight to guide me. There is no moon tonight, and clouds cover much of the sky. The old wooden boardwalk creaks and clatters with each step.
When I get to the beach, I turn off the flashlight and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I'll be shooting in low light anyway, and I need a sense of what my camera will be seeing. After a few minutes, I'm finally able to see them—a low line of spherical boulders, half-buried in the sand.
I pick my way across the shoreline, moving closer until I hit the water's edge. The tide is out this morning which lets me get within a few meters of the boulders. They rise out of the sea like little hillocks, each an island unto itself. Yesterday, in the afternoon sun, they seemed strange and beautiful. Now, in the darkness before dawn, they are a fragment of a fractured alien landscape.
The waves are slow and steady as they hit the beach. I set down my tripod where the sand gives way to water. I screw the Nikon into place, and fiddle with the camera's focal length and aperature width. It is still too dark to do more than guess at what I'll need. Then I unwrap the granola bar and settle down to wait. Nearly an hour passes before the first hints of light hit the horizon, far off in the east.
I've come with an empty roll, twenty-four unexposed frames, hoping that one of them might capture some shred of magic in the world. As the red light of dawn paints the clouds overhead, I go to work. I have twenty-four tries to get this right.
In the end, I only need two.
Despite what you may have heard, I'm not a misanthrope. I don't hate people, I just prefer when they aren't around. In that sense, it's a good time to be alive.
Humanity builds enormous edifices. Palaces, cathedrals, factories, shopping malls—grand temples to the God of the Age. Who can hate a species that produces such beauty? But if you've ever had the opportunity to visit one of these places at night, at a time when its normal operations have ceased and the building itself lies empty and abandoned, perhaps you'll understand me when I say that human creations are never more beautiful than in the absence of their creators.
The grandeur, the majesty, of a silent shopping mall cannot be overstated. Mile after mile of shop windows, all dark; the shadows of commerce caged inside and waiting, lifeless, for customers. It's as if you've stepped inside one of those old paintings by Willem Kalf, inhabiting it.
I've always loved photography, but at times I've envied the Kalfs of the world. Paint and canvas creates a certain derealization—a sense of distance that lets you look at the world through new eyes. Film shows the world as it is, with all of life's thick mundanity. How do you make a camera capture transcendence?
On the west coast of Africa, in what was once called Namibia, is an old German colony town called Kolmannskuppe. Two or three centuries ago, it used to be a part of the diamond-mining trade. Then, after the diamonds dried up and the desert began to swallow the town, it became a place for tourists. Once, I'd have needed a permit to travel here.
I take a swig of water as I hike across the sand to the old, two-story school. On my right, I pass a tall and crumbling brick facade. It reminds me of the tombs at Petra. The summer sun is a blazing ingot laid across the anvil of the sky.
A tan-and-white springbok, resting in the shade of one of the ruined houses, sees me and comes alert. It does not run. Perhaps it's forgotten to be afraid of humans.
I'm looking for a shot here, but I don't know what it will be.
The ground floor of the school is filled with sand, so I walk up one of the dunes to a second-story window. The glass is long gone, shattered by the winds and reclaimed by the desert. I push my way inside, and a few wispy splinters from the wooden window-frame lodge in my loose white clothing.
Sun-stained traces of green paint cling to the walls. When the first photographers came to record Kolmannskuppe, that paint was already flecked and peeling. I am far from the first, however. Far from the hundredth, or the thousandth. Perhaps I won't even be the last.
Is this what Calvino imagined, when he gave life to Marco Polo's tales? As I pass a stairway descending into the sand, I can almost imagine Argia below me. Clay students, going about their lives beneath the earth.
Ahead, a chunk of the school's brick wall has fallen inward and knocked out the floor of the hallway. I edge forward to take a look. The boards below me creak as I shift my weight. Through the gap in the floor, I find my target.
In the room below, less than a foot of sand covers the ground. A sapling camel thorn tree has somehow taken root here, its roots surely delving down through the school's foundations. Its branches are stunted and gnarled, but shoots of green still spring forth. Dancing between the branches is a restless dune lark, its mottled tan coloring a stark contrast to the tree. The rhythmic flutters of the lark's wings are the only sound in the empty school.
Carefully, I set my camera bag beside me and stretch out on the hallway floor. The boards creek again, and the lark pauses to stare up at me. I freeze, feeling my heart beat faster. Will it fly away?
It does not, and I get the shot I was after.
Humanity was in retreat long before the fertility collapse. Japan and the old nations of Europe stopped breeding at replacement rates in the 20th century. The Americas followed not long after, then many of the Asiatic countries. Still, some continued to grow. Ecologists and economists worried. When I was growing up, we used to hear a lot of talk about "carrying capacity" in schools: how many people the land could support.
By the time I was born, every major country—even the ones already in decline—had instituted some form of population control. Family size taxes, parental licensing, in a few cases even forced sterilization. You can imagine what it took for us to reach that point.
I'd just finished high school when the first reports of the collapse began. A sudden uptick in business for fertility clinics. A drop-off in hospital admissions for pregnancies. It didn't happen all at once, not like some lost plague coming to ravage us. It was generational, though it seemed to hit a tipping point with my generation. Too many couples where neither partner could conceive.
The population control laws were repealed when the extent of the collapse became clear. But the change came too late—new social norms were already established. Some people thought of children as a luxury they couldn't afford. Some thought of them as a sin against the environment.
Some just didn't care. I've never had a fertility test. The results wouldn't have mattered to me, one way or the other.
I am old, and my film is almost gone.
Morning fog fills the woods. My steps are sure—I've walked this path before. I always knew my journey would end here. I flick a lever on the Nikon and wind the film. A small window displays the number '23'. I have two shots left, and I know what they both will be.
A spring breeze caresses the air, but in the shadow of Pripyat it is always autumn. The first casualties of a disaster are often the smallest. Children. Pets. In this case, bacteria. Red and gold leaves litter the forest floor, even while green shoots of new growth fill the trees around me. The trees themselves are healthy, having learned to adapt to their environment. The bacteria that compost dead matter have recovered as well, but they remain oddly inefficient here. It can take more than two years for a fallen leaf to decay into new soil. Things die here, but they do not rot. The scent of the forest is alien, almost antiseptic.
I find what I'm looking for—a stand of strange black fungi tucked among the leaves. It takes me a good four minutes to judge how I want to frame the shot. The mist clings to the trees like an anxious lover, and I have time to be careful. Eventually I get what I've come here for. Black mushrooms mixing with green grass and red-brown leaves, all in a tight focus, with the dim shadows of tall, thin trunks rising out of the fog behind them. I'm sure the shot is excellent, though I doubt anyone will ever have the chance to develop it.
I wind the film, and the little window on the Nikon reads '24'.
Turning southeast, I begin to walk again. My goal is still many miles away, and my steps are slow these days. After another hour, the fog begins to burn off and the air warms with its first taste of sunlight. The land around me is quiet—not silent, but also not saturated with the typical sounds of nature. This place is like a barrel of water that's been tipped over and half-drained. More than a century later, it still waits to be filled.
As I approach the edge of the forest, I hear a voice call out to me. I stop and turn, shocked. How long has it been since I've seen another person? Weeks, at least. Never this far east.
A young woman in an embroidered linen dress stares at me. She stabs out a finger and calls again. Belatedly, I realize she is not pointing at me. She is pointing at the ground in front of me. I look down and find a small red ball.
The woman—probably in her late teens, now that I look more closely—calls out again. I catch a glimpse of two younger children, a boy and another girl, peeking out at me when they think I'm not looking. I reach down and pick up the ball, then begin to walk toward them.
Holding out a warding hand, the woman motions for me to stop and throw the ball to her. I frown, irritated. Instead, I tuck the ball under one arm and sit down with my back to a tree trunk. The woman frowns back, folding her arms across her chest. I figure she can't be that scared of me though, or she wouldn't have called out when she saw me. She could have simply let me pass and gone to collect the ball herself. I doubt I would have noticed her, if she'd wanted to keep hidden.
After a moment, I see her shoulders droop. She motions to her side and the two children scurry out from behind a bush. The three of them approach me together, speaking quiet words to one another that I can't understand.
When they draw close, all three stop. The young woman says something, and then the boy steps forward. He holds out a hand to me, unwrapping his fingers to show a tarnished old coin like the ones people must have used in these parts, many years ago. The boy can't be more than five years old.
Surprising even myself, I bark out a laugh. He thinks I want to barter with him? I shake my head, and then bounce the red ball across the forest floor. The boy uncoils like a whip, reaching down and grabbing it in a smooth, graceful motion.
I don't remember the last time I saw children this young. Has it been a decade? More? Surely there are still children in this world, but I avoid people when I can. There are no children in the places I travel. Or there were not, until now.
A rush of emotion tugs at me and before I realize it, I'm placing my eye against the Nikon's viewfinder. The image I see feels as perfect as any I've ever found. The boy is handing the red ball to the young girl—perhaps his sister—while the older one looks on. Is she their mother? She might be old enough. I cannot tell. Above, the sun shines through new leaves in the treetops. In the background stands a blue-painted cabin that I must not have noticed before. The boy smiles. The girl laughs. The shutter clicks.
I wind the film and pop open the back of the camera, pulling it out. Then I swing the door closed again, leaving the Nikon empty. I feel a moment of regret for the shot I'll never take, the last picture I'd wanted to add to my collection.
My bones creak as I stand. I place the Nikon back into its case. With a smile, I slip the camera bag off my shoulder and hand it to the oldest. She stares at me quizzically, and makes a gesture I don't recognize. "It's yours now," I say. "There's no more film, but maybe you'll find a use for it."
I know she can't understand me, but there is intelligence in her eyes. She says something in response. I nod and turn to go.
It was my father's camera once. For sixty-two years I've watched the world through its lens, searching for the alchemy that only exists between two perfect moments. As I tuck the last roll of film into my pocket and head west, I wonder whether I've been looking in the wrong place all this time.
Landscape Photography
This excels in all my favourite ways: It's subtle, delicate, almost humble. Its description comes as tightly-controlled poeticism. It works its magic in between the lines. Its message, melancholic and humanist, comes out as action, and action imbued with meaning by the strength of implication.
Damnit, this sort of thing half makes me want to delete my whole stories folder.
I can't think of much more to say than that.
This excels in all my favourite ways: It's subtle, delicate, almost humble. Its description comes as tightly-controlled poeticism. It works its magic in between the lines. Its message, melancholic and humanist, comes out as action, and action imbued with meaning by the strength of implication.
Damnit, this sort of thing half makes me want to delete my whole stories folder.
I can't think of much more to say than that.
This is very very pretty. On pure writing merits alone, it's very professional and in the top percentile of stories. Something that I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see published in an actual literary journal.
I found the ending somewhat dissatisfying though? At first I was stuck on thinking that there was going to be some twist, that this was the narrator's imagination, or that there was something weird and supernatural going on due to Pripyat's radiation or whatever (In that sense, it may make more sense to place the final scene in a less loaded setting; at this point there theoretically may already be less people in the world, so you don't need to have the narrator in a place that's deserted right now?) But once I got past that, I think my final qualm was that the final picture did end up being so perfect. It's not saying a lot to have the narrator question his approach when given the exact perfect image with laughing cherubic children, right? I think it'd be more meaningful to have the last image be flawed, but contain vibrant life in a different way. After all, people are flawed, and never pristine frozen images, and that's what makes them wonderful.
I don't know though. That's me backseat-writing on what's already a nice, focused story. Good work.
I found the ending somewhat dissatisfying though? At first I was stuck on thinking that there was going to be some twist, that this was the narrator's imagination, or that there was something weird and supernatural going on due to Pripyat's radiation or whatever (In that sense, it may make more sense to place the final scene in a less loaded setting; at this point there theoretically may already be less people in the world, so you don't need to have the narrator in a place that's deserted right now?) But once I got past that, I think my final qualm was that the final picture did end up being so perfect. It's not saying a lot to have the narrator question his approach when given the exact perfect image with laughing cherubic children, right? I think it'd be more meaningful to have the last image be flawed, but contain vibrant life in a different way. After all, people are flawed, and never pristine frozen images, and that's what makes them wonderful.
I don't know though. That's me backseat-writing on what's already a nice, focused story. Good work.
Landscape Photography
Spoilers, of course - don't read this before reading the story. :P
For the most part I enjoyed this story; the writing is well-executed and fairly subtle, and the idea of shooting that final roll of (probably well-expired) film by traveling around the world of the distant future – and reserving those last 24 shots for human-made, desolate places – was interesting.
But honestly, for me it didn't really move much beyond that.
First, one real nitpick: this line doesn't make any sense in the long run, as we don't know 'you' and will never have 'heard of' you by the end of the story. It could characterize general feeling of people at the time of setting (which we never find out), but it only confuses the story since no one else knows 'you', either. It's a much stronger statement without anything before the comma.
Okay one more nitpick: Why? Why are you telling us this without telling us why this feeling is important, in some way?
Okay, just one more! I'm a Nikon shooter, but you really should mention the brand just once and leave it to "camera" after that, otherwise every other brand mention begins to seem like an advertisement. (Okay, at least to me.)
As an amateur photographer very interested in low-light / moonlight photography, I've seen a lot of places and the works of others enough to know that you can find desolation and decrepit works of humans everywhere that are shown to be worthy of an artist's lens, so the first two sections left me feeling a little deflated since there was apparently not much except exposition (for me) without too much point to them as a whole.
Which leads to my overall feeling that this story would have been stronger with just a few small foreshadowed hints along the way that something was different that we should pay attention to. There was no lead-in to the twist you presented (the one which turns desolate landscape into human portrait photography): only a stark transition. The entirety of the first two sections could easily take place in the present — a random coastline, Kolmannskuppe. Providing that foreshadowing would aid the transition (which gains nothing from being abrupt with so much normal lead-in) and still allow for an interesting reveal of the future.
I really can't add more at the moment. Like I said, I enjoyed this, but I feel like it missed the mark a bit.
Spoilers, of course - don't read this before reading the story. :P
For the most part I enjoyed this story; the writing is well-executed and fairly subtle, and the idea of shooting that final roll of (probably well-expired) film by traveling around the world of the distant future – and reserving those last 24 shots for human-made, desolate places – was interesting.
But honestly, for me it didn't really move much beyond that.
Despite what you may have heard, I'm not a misanthrope.
First, one real nitpick: this line doesn't make any sense in the long run, as we don't know 'you' and will never have 'heard of' you by the end of the story. It could characterize general feeling of people at the time of setting (which we never find out), but it only confuses the story since no one else knows 'you', either. It's a much stronger statement without anything before the comma.
I always knew my journey would end here.
Okay one more nitpick: Why? Why are you telling us this without telling us why this feeling is important, in some way?
Nikon
Okay, just one more! I'm a Nikon shooter, but you really should mention the brand just once and leave it to "camera" after that, otherwise every other brand mention begins to seem like an advertisement. (Okay, at least to me.)
As an amateur photographer very interested in low-light / moonlight photography, I've seen a lot of places and the works of others enough to know that you can find desolation and decrepit works of humans everywhere that are shown to be worthy of an artist's lens, so the first two sections left me feeling a little deflated since there was apparently not much except exposition (for me) without too much point to them as a whole.
Which leads to my overall feeling that this story would have been stronger with just a few small foreshadowed hints along the way that something was different that we should pay attention to. There was no lead-in to the twist you presented (the one which turns desolate landscape into human portrait photography): only a stark transition. The entirety of the first two sections could easily take place in the present — a random coastline, Kolmannskuppe. Providing that foreshadowing would aid the transition (which gains nothing from being abrupt with so much normal lead-in) and still allow for an interesting reveal of the future.
I really can't add more at the moment. Like I said, I enjoyed this, but I feel like it missed the mark a bit.
This story was very pretty, but also kind of empty. It lent its moments a great deal of weight, as the protagonist works his way through his roll of film, taking picture after picture in a desolate, lonely world. This is both purposeful and deliberate, as his refusal to interface with the world is driven not only by his own lack of wanting to be around other people, but a lack of people in general.
That being said, while the story ends up bringing in the “humans going extinct, except maybe not” thing at the end, and it fit with the overall tone of the story, I just couldn’t really bring myself to be overly enamored with it. It wasn’t that it was bad, it was that I’ve seen it before, and while he is taking pictures, in the end the whole thing ended up feeling a bit artsy to me – and I do mean it in the “kind of bad” sort of way, as it ended up feeling…
I dunno, trite? Maybe I’ve just read too many stories like this. Maybe it wasn't as tightly bound together as it could have been, as the picture at the start - of the rocks - didn't really seem to have the same link to the lack of humanity/an abandoned world as the pictures of the ruined school or the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
That being said, while the story ends up bringing in the “humans going extinct, except maybe not” thing at the end, and it fit with the overall tone of the story, I just couldn’t really bring myself to be overly enamored with it. It wasn’t that it was bad, it was that I’ve seen it before, and while he is taking pictures, in the end the whole thing ended up feeling a bit artsy to me – and I do mean it in the “kind of bad” sort of way, as it ended up feeling…
I dunno, trite? Maybe I’ve just read too many stories like this. Maybe it wasn't as tightly bound together as it could have been, as the picture at the start - of the rocks - didn't really seem to have the same link to the lack of humanity/an abandoned world as the pictures of the ruined school or the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
This flowed pretty well and I found myself following the main character's emotions perfectly, but by the end of it I ended up realizing there isn't much new here and the last reveal and poignancy kind of fell flat for me. There's nothing really wrong here, but there isn't anything that interesting or spectacular.
This story is so-so. (5/10)
This story is so-so. (5/10)
Very nice imagery:
As one would hope from the title, but it didn't sell me entirely on its background premise. Why would every major country institute population control measures? Even China's stopped their "one child" policy at this point, haven't they. I'd say just go with the fertility collapse thing. That'd work just as well on its own.
Mike
As one would hope from the title, but it didn't sell me entirely on its background premise. Why would every major country institute population control measures? Even China's stopped their "one child" policy at this point, haven't they. I'd say just go with the fertility collapse thing. That'd work just as well on its own.
Mike
I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.
24 – Landscape Photography
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of plot hook here, but the prose is really catching me. Author, you're doing a very good job painting a scene with words. Which, I suppose, is maybe appropriate here, given the title. Some nice use of simile and multisensory imagery, and a lot of little concrete details.
Not a fan of this line. The sudden second-person inclusion really throws me out of the text, probably for the first time. I know there's this whole thing about first-person perspective meaning the perspective character is actually narrating to the reader, but this just feels jarring to me. Otherwise, though, I'm kind of digging the protagonist's voice. He might be a little full of himself, but I feel like he (or she, I guess) is delivering a pretty clear perspective. Word choice is a bit... do I want to call it purple? I'm not sure. It's detailed, but in a way that seems to kind of be carrying that voicing. The Willem Kalf thing I especially like. I had to look him up, but the line is delivered in a way that feels natural to the narrator.
Aaagh! Some of this language, I have to admit, I'm just loving. "The summer sun is a blazing ingot laid across the anvil of the sky"? Come on. I want to write metaphors like that. I like the Calvino reference, too; though I think the overall imagery is starting to drop off. That first section had some serious multi-sensory depth. This third section has a lot of visual detail and some auditory detail, but there's a lot more you could be doing here, author. The photographer is in the African desert, in the daytime, during summer. I'm guessing it's probably hot there? I feel like you're missing some easy lay-ups here.
Well, that's a change of pace. This line doesn't take me completely by surprise. All of the last three sections have been about places without people. Still, this is so abrupt that it takes me aback, when juxtaposed with the style this story is employing elsewhere. Really, this whole section is a little weird. I hate using show vs. tell language, but this is very telly. The other introspective section had a clearer character voice behind it. There are some nice details here, but it still feels very expository without doing a whole lot of multitasking with the text. Get some character building in here, to go along with the world-building. Or... well, this story doesn't really seem to be going in for plot. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm not feeling like there's a great lack here in not having a major plot focus. It's a bit like "To Make a Choice"—this story isn't going for a traditional narrative; it just wants to take an idea and put it up on the screen.
I'm getting the sense I must have missed a subtle time-skip in here. I'm guessing the author intended to use the word "old" to convey that in the last section, but it's too sparse for me to really buy what it's selling, especially since we didn't know the photographer's age in the earlier scenes. The photographer is pretty clear about being out of film now, despite thinking he/she had a lot more available in that first scene, so clearly there's been a lot going on between those points.
I like the change-up at the end, with other people finally in the mix. I also like the photographer's re-evaluation at the end. I think there are some points in here, though, where you're probably being overly subtle to the story's detriment. The prose is really nice throughout, and this is another breezy read, but I want some more depth to the photographer's character—especially if the plot (such as it is) turns on the photographer finally having a late-in-life change of heart to stop being so avoidant where other people are concerned. That's an attitude that's stated pretty clearly, but then never really challenged until it's directly overthrown by the story.
The prose is a strong point here and I don't think you need to worry about that (other than the aforementioned suggestion that you might be able to get some more bang out of adding a bit more mult-sensory work after the first section). The plot... there's really not much of one, and I think I'm okay with that. This is more theme-focused, and although the theme is sort of open-ended, I think you're doing a good job resolving that toward the end. The places I'd work on this, then, are in that section on the fertility collapse which just kind of sticks out relative to the rest of this story, in building more solid characterization for the photographer (you were doing a really good job with this early on, I thought), and in maybe easing back on the subtlety in a few places to make the timeline you're looking at clearer, and possibly foreshadow the whole "humanity in retreat" thing earlier. It barely touches that first section at all, and even by the time you hit it full-on in the fourth section, it comes as a bit of a surprise, at least for me.
All that said, though, I definitely enjoyed this and I'm inclined to give it a Solid on the strength of what you've got going right. This could definitely be improved, but even though it's not my usual thing, I enjoyed it quite a bit the way it is right now.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Solid
24 – Landscape Photography
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of plot hook here, but the prose is really catching me. Author, you're doing a very good job painting a scene with words. Which, I suppose, is maybe appropriate here, given the title. Some nice use of simile and multisensory imagery, and a lot of little concrete details.
Despite what you may have heard, I'm not a misanthrope.
Not a fan of this line. The sudden second-person inclusion really throws me out of the text, probably for the first time. I know there's this whole thing about first-person perspective meaning the perspective character is actually narrating to the reader, but this just feels jarring to me. Otherwise, though, I'm kind of digging the protagonist's voice. He might be a little full of himself, but I feel like he (or she, I guess) is delivering a pretty clear perspective. Word choice is a bit... do I want to call it purple? I'm not sure. It's detailed, but in a way that seems to kind of be carrying that voicing. The Willem Kalf thing I especially like. I had to look him up, but the line is delivered in a way that feels natural to the narrator.
Aaagh! Some of this language, I have to admit, I'm just loving. "The summer sun is a blazing ingot laid across the anvil of the sky"? Come on. I want to write metaphors like that. I like the Calvino reference, too; though I think the overall imagery is starting to drop off. That first section had some serious multi-sensory depth. This third section has a lot of visual detail and some auditory detail, but there's a lot more you could be doing here, author. The photographer is in the African desert, in the daytime, during summer. I'm guessing it's probably hot there? I feel like you're missing some easy lay-ups here.
Humanity was in retreat long before the fertility collapse.
Well, that's a change of pace. This line doesn't take me completely by surprise. All of the last three sections have been about places without people. Still, this is so abrupt that it takes me aback, when juxtaposed with the style this story is employing elsewhere. Really, this whole section is a little weird. I hate using show vs. tell language, but this is very telly. The other introspective section had a clearer character voice behind it. There are some nice details here, but it still feels very expository without doing a whole lot of multitasking with the text. Get some character building in here, to go along with the world-building. Or... well, this story doesn't really seem to be going in for plot. I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm not feeling like there's a great lack here in not having a major plot focus. It's a bit like "To Make a Choice"—this story isn't going for a traditional narrative; it just wants to take an idea and put it up on the screen.
I'm getting the sense I must have missed a subtle time-skip in here. I'm guessing the author intended to use the word "old" to convey that in the last section, but it's too sparse for me to really buy what it's selling, especially since we didn't know the photographer's age in the earlier scenes. The photographer is pretty clear about being out of film now, despite thinking he/she had a lot more available in that first scene, so clearly there's been a lot going on between those points.
I like the change-up at the end, with other people finally in the mix. I also like the photographer's re-evaluation at the end. I think there are some points in here, though, where you're probably being overly subtle to the story's detriment. The prose is really nice throughout, and this is another breezy read, but I want some more depth to the photographer's character—especially if the plot (such as it is) turns on the photographer finally having a late-in-life change of heart to stop being so avoidant where other people are concerned. That's an attitude that's stated pretty clearly, but then never really challenged until it's directly overthrown by the story.
The prose is a strong point here and I don't think you need to worry about that (other than the aforementioned suggestion that you might be able to get some more bang out of adding a bit more mult-sensory work after the first section). The plot... there's really not much of one, and I think I'm okay with that. This is more theme-focused, and although the theme is sort of open-ended, I think you're doing a good job resolving that toward the end. The places I'd work on this, then, are in that section on the fertility collapse which just kind of sticks out relative to the rest of this story, in building more solid characterization for the photographer (you were doing a really good job with this early on, I thought), and in maybe easing back on the subtlety in a few places to make the timeline you're looking at clearer, and possibly foreshadow the whole "humanity in retreat" thing earlier. It barely touches that first section at all, and even by the time you hit it full-on in the fourth section, it comes as a bit of a surprise, at least for me.
All that said, though, I definitely enjoyed this and I'm inclined to give it a Solid on the strength of what you've got going right. This could definitely be improved, but even though it's not my usual thing, I enjoyed it quite a bit the way it is right now.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Solid
I've got mixed feelings about this one. The prose is tight, and each individual scene is very vivid. I just don't feel like it works as a story quite the way it should.
Take the setting. The protagonist is using a film camera -- which solidly sets this in the 20th Century, or perhaps the Aughts -- and yet we're given background about a worldwide population crisis followed by a fertility crisis, which heavily implies a future setting (unless there's some unexplained AU going on here). There's a family living in Pripyat, which was basically abandoned after Chernobyl, so again that suggests it's been long enough for the radiation to die away. (You don't want to do film photography in a hot zone, anyway, or your film will all end up exposed.) The whole thing feels rather unmoored in time, the more so since at the end he's taking his last shots as an old man. I think having him be an urban explorer -- taking shots of abandoned places in the post-crash ruins of human society -- could have worked well here to reinforce his characterization and slip in exposition about what happened to the world, but instead we're just shown (as others noted) places that are already desolate.
I think the ending would have more impact if we'd seen the photographer's misanthropy more directly earlier in the story. He spends so much time avoiding humanity that when we see him interact with it for the first time, we don't have any baseline to compare it to, and it's hard to tell exactly how his years of solitude and reflection have changed him. You may want to bookend this with a scene at the beginning of him unexpectedly running across someone on his photography trips and doing his best to ignore them, or something.
Tier: Almost There
Take the setting. The protagonist is using a film camera -- which solidly sets this in the 20th Century, or perhaps the Aughts -- and yet we're given background about a worldwide population crisis followed by a fertility crisis, which heavily implies a future setting (unless there's some unexplained AU going on here). There's a family living in Pripyat, which was basically abandoned after Chernobyl, so again that suggests it's been long enough for the radiation to die away. (You don't want to do film photography in a hot zone, anyway, or your film will all end up exposed.) The whole thing feels rather unmoored in time, the more so since at the end he's taking his last shots as an old man. I think having him be an urban explorer -- taking shots of abandoned places in the post-crash ruins of human society -- could have worked well here to reinforce his characterization and slip in exposition about what happened to the world, but instead we're just shown (as others noted) places that are already desolate.
I think the ending would have more impact if we'd seen the photographer's misanthropy more directly earlier in the story. He spends so much time avoiding humanity that when we see him interact with it for the first time, we don't have any baseline to compare it to, and it's hard to tell exactly how his years of solitude and reflection have changed him. You may want to bookend this with a scene at the beginning of him unexpectedly running across someone on his photography trips and doing his best to ignore them, or something.
Tier: Almost There
God, this should've made the finals. The wording, the descriptions, they're precise and melancholy and they paint two pictures for us at once – the landscapes through which the writer walks, but also the slowly emerging history that led to this point.
>>Cold in Gardez
I feel you, man. I mean, I don't usually go for stories like this, and I agree with a lot of the criticisms others left, including from Bradel! But the writing is so strong that I felt for sure this would end up doing better than it did.
I wish I'd rated it higher now. That said, even my lowest rated story was one which I really enjoyed... my slate has been sooo good this round, and some of my placements made me feel very cruel.
I feel you, man. I mean, I don't usually go for stories like this, and I agree with a lot of the criticisms others left, including from Bradel! But the writing is so strong that I felt for sure this would end up doing better than it did.
I wish I'd rated it higher now. That said, even my lowest rated story was one which I really enjoyed... my slate has been sooo good this round, and some of my placements made me feel very cruel.
>>Lucky_Dreams, >>Cold in Gardez
Agreed, I had it in the upper quartile. Loved the evocative prose on it, and at some points I was half thinking it was a CiG work, as it evoked the same sort of vibe I've gotten from his Lost Cities tales.
Agreed, I had it in the upper quartile. Loved the evocative prose on it, and at some points I was half thinking it was a CiG work, as it evoked the same sort of vibe I've gotten from his Lost Cities tales.
>>Cold in Gardez
Sorry, everyone who liked this. I just wasn't feeling it, and I'm one of those plebeian idiots who puts prose quality near the bottom of his list of things to consider about stories.
Sorry, everyone who liked this. I just wasn't feeling it, and I'm one of those plebeian idiots who puts prose quality near the bottom of his list of things to consider about stories.
...well, this has turned into kind of a weird conversation.
Okay, y'all, this story is not all that good. I'm totally cool with it not making the cut. For once, I think I'm going to post a recap blog on this guy, now that my anonymity is gone. (Some of that is because I'm starting to think maybe this is worth trying to salvage into something, given the reaction; last night I was just thinking of tossing this on the junk heap.) So if I'm going to be perfectly honest, here are what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of this story.
Strengths:
- Nice prose
- Nice tone
Weaknesses:
- Lack of character building (all told, nothing shown)
- Weak world-building (Sec.4 explanation feels unmoored to the rest of the story)
- Lack of conflict and plot
- Loose theme (I have an emotion I was shooting for, but I couldn't put clear theme into words here)
That's just on the top level. I'd also quibble with the balance of foreshadowing—I didn't really start in on the "humanity in retreat" thing until Sec.3, largely because I didn't settle on it until at least Sec.2. I agree with >>Ferd Threstle's two major points about the use of Pripyat and the choice to describe the final photo as compositionally perfect. There are a few other issues readers have brought up as well, though I think I'll break a couple of these out for a longer discussion.
>>TitaniumDragon mentions that the first scene with the (not directly named) Moeraki boulders doesn't tie into the overall story very well, which I consider an excellent catch. I know it's kind of lame, but this is the first serious writing I've accomplished in about six months, and that first scene was me trying to ease myself into something. I took the old "write what you know" dictum and minimally modified an actual event from my life. You can see the photo I took here—I think it's probably about the best shot I've ever managed. (I dropped or changed a few surface details, like the fact that it was actually a fairly lame digital camera that I used, and that I sat in the car for about half an hour playing PSP games, waiting for sunrise to get closer—hey, what is artistic license for?) Anyway, point here being that I strongly agree with TD's call about Sec.1 not really tying into the other sections except tonally. That's a thing that needs fixing. I should be foreshadowing a lot more stuff in this section, and I'll need to think about how to do so.
I also thought >>Southpaw caught a couple good points, but the ones that hit home for me largely made it into my self-review above. (I actually disagree with the Nikon thing; I like having the proper noun to change up the wordspace a little and provide a bit of extra concretization.) I definitely agree that Sec.1 and Sec.3 aren't really pulling their weight narratively—but then again, the overall absence of narrative is one of the larger problems in this story, to me, when you compare it to one of this round's really excellent entries like "The Precession of the (Goddamn) Equinoxes" or "The Name Upon his Forehead". It also seems like a few readers thought the photographer was using the same roll of film the whole time. I think I need to do more to make sure I don't accidentally leave that impression. He talks about having many rolls of film in Sec.1, but it's a throwaway comment with a lot less narrative importance than the Sec.3 stuff that sticks in people's heads.
>>Baal Bunny's comment was one of those, "Dammit, Mike, I hate you but I love you" things. I'd decided on the overall structure for the story fairly early: three photographic sections, broken up with two introspective ones. I got into the middle of writing the second introspective one, didn't particularly like how it was going, and in particular found that I really didn't like the mixing between the two ideas there. But I'd already basically written the section, and I didn't have a lot of good ideas for what else to do with the space or how to make the story there work better, so I wrote a couple extra sentences in the section to try to paper over some of the problems and left it as is. I'm glad I got called on it, though; it's easy to assume your quick-fixes work when you've already looked at a spot and messed with it. It's good to hear you still didn't really fix the larger issue underneath.
And of course I agree with everything >>horizon says, because horizon is a frickin' genius. I tried to drop some timing information in the Kolmanskuppe section, about how many years it had been since Namibian diamond mining was a major industry with German settlers. Why on earth I thought this would be sufficient information for anybody to infer a timeline is completely beyond me—it's not like I wasn't on Wikipedia when I wrote it, trying to pin that stuff down. Who here is going to know enough about diamond mining in southern Africa to pin down a timeframe based on that? The choice to make the Nikon a hand-me-down from the photographer's father was supposed to get at the first timing issue raised, though I obviously could have made that more textual. Given that it's got some good characterization value in it, not making it more textual was kind of dumb. The Pripyat thing, too, if you've *cough* watched a few documentaries on it *cough* you might know that there are already some families living out in the exclusion zone. It's a lot of free land, and a lot of it isn't actually that bad. So, at least to me, there's really no suggestion with Pripyat that we'd be moving thousands of years into the future until parts of the radiation really started dying down. I was also trying for this subtle idea that the photographer was going there to view the more radioactive parts of the plant, knowing he'd die but wanting to experience this sort of holy grail of human places without humanity. I'd wanted to tie in thoughts about the film being useless because he knew that it'd be ruined as soon as he went inside the plant, too. But things really didn't come together here, because I also wanted to confront him with people and make him change his mind, and it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense to have him expositing about all the bad things that'll happen and then completely changing what does happen.
Anyway, the Pripyat section is just a mess in a lot of ways. There are elements of it I like, but those are mostly the character, plot, and theme elements that I finally started using a bit there after skipping over them in the first four sections. I'll probably pick a new setting and redo that entirely. Given that this is supposed to be a future setting, I think it's really kind of dumb to not be walking the photographer through one or more places that tell stories about that unknown future we haven't seen.
This guy's probably going to take a lot of work, but at least I think y'all have convinced me that it's not a complete lost cause.
Okay, y'all, this story is not all that good. I'm totally cool with it not making the cut. For once, I think I'm going to post a recap blog on this guy, now that my anonymity is gone. (Some of that is because I'm starting to think maybe this is worth trying to salvage into something, given the reaction; last night I was just thinking of tossing this on the junk heap.) So if I'm going to be perfectly honest, here are what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of this story.
Strengths:
- Nice prose
- Nice tone
Weaknesses:
- Lack of character building (all told, nothing shown)
- Weak world-building (Sec.4 explanation feels unmoored to the rest of the story)
- Lack of conflict and plot
- Loose theme (I have an emotion I was shooting for, but I couldn't put clear theme into words here)
That's just on the top level. I'd also quibble with the balance of foreshadowing—I didn't really start in on the "humanity in retreat" thing until Sec.3, largely because I didn't settle on it until at least Sec.2. I agree with >>Ferd Threstle's two major points about the use of Pripyat and the choice to describe the final photo as compositionally perfect. There are a few other issues readers have brought up as well, though I think I'll break a couple of these out for a longer discussion.
>>TitaniumDragon mentions that the first scene with the (not directly named) Moeraki boulders doesn't tie into the overall story very well, which I consider an excellent catch. I know it's kind of lame, but this is the first serious writing I've accomplished in about six months, and that first scene was me trying to ease myself into something. I took the old "write what you know" dictum and minimally modified an actual event from my life. You can see the photo I took here—I think it's probably about the best shot I've ever managed. (I dropped or changed a few surface details, like the fact that it was actually a fairly lame digital camera that I used, and that I sat in the car for about half an hour playing PSP games, waiting for sunrise to get closer—hey, what is artistic license for?) Anyway, point here being that I strongly agree with TD's call about Sec.1 not really tying into the other sections except tonally. That's a thing that needs fixing. I should be foreshadowing a lot more stuff in this section, and I'll need to think about how to do so.
I also thought >>Southpaw caught a couple good points, but the ones that hit home for me largely made it into my self-review above. (I actually disagree with the Nikon thing; I like having the proper noun to change up the wordspace a little and provide a bit of extra concretization.) I definitely agree that Sec.1 and Sec.3 aren't really pulling their weight narratively—but then again, the overall absence of narrative is one of the larger problems in this story, to me, when you compare it to one of this round's really excellent entries like "The Precession of the (Goddamn) Equinoxes" or "The Name Upon his Forehead". It also seems like a few readers thought the photographer was using the same roll of film the whole time. I think I need to do more to make sure I don't accidentally leave that impression. He talks about having many rolls of film in Sec.1, but it's a throwaway comment with a lot less narrative importance than the Sec.3 stuff that sticks in people's heads.
>>Baal Bunny's comment was one of those, "Dammit, Mike, I hate you but I love you" things. I'd decided on the overall structure for the story fairly early: three photographic sections, broken up with two introspective ones. I got into the middle of writing the second introspective one, didn't particularly like how it was going, and in particular found that I really didn't like the mixing between the two ideas there. But I'd already basically written the section, and I didn't have a lot of good ideas for what else to do with the space or how to make the story there work better, so I wrote a couple extra sentences in the section to try to paper over some of the problems and left it as is. I'm glad I got called on it, though; it's easy to assume your quick-fixes work when you've already looked at a spot and messed with it. It's good to hear you still didn't really fix the larger issue underneath.
And of course I agree with everything >>horizon says, because horizon is a frickin' genius. I tried to drop some timing information in the Kolmanskuppe section, about how many years it had been since Namibian diamond mining was a major industry with German settlers. Why on earth I thought this would be sufficient information for anybody to infer a timeline is completely beyond me—it's not like I wasn't on Wikipedia when I wrote it, trying to pin that stuff down. Who here is going to know enough about diamond mining in southern Africa to pin down a timeframe based on that? The choice to make the Nikon a hand-me-down from the photographer's father was supposed to get at the first timing issue raised, though I obviously could have made that more textual. Given that it's got some good characterization value in it, not making it more textual was kind of dumb. The Pripyat thing, too, if you've *cough* watched a few documentaries on it *cough* you might know that there are already some families living out in the exclusion zone. It's a lot of free land, and a lot of it isn't actually that bad. So, at least to me, there's really no suggestion with Pripyat that we'd be moving thousands of years into the future until parts of the radiation really started dying down. I was also trying for this subtle idea that the photographer was going there to view the more radioactive parts of the plant, knowing he'd die but wanting to experience this sort of holy grail of human places without humanity. I'd wanted to tie in thoughts about the film being useless because he knew that it'd be ruined as soon as he went inside the plant, too. But things really didn't come together here, because I also wanted to confront him with people and make him change his mind, and it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense to have him expositing about all the bad things that'll happen and then completely changing what does happen.
Anyway, the Pripyat section is just a mess in a lot of ways. There are elements of it I like, but those are mostly the character, plot, and theme elements that I finally started using a bit there after skipping over them in the first four sections. I'll probably pick a new setting and redo that entirely. Given that this is supposed to be a future setting, I think it's really kind of dumb to not be walking the photographer through one or more places that tell stories about that unknown future we haven't seen.
This guy's probably going to take a lot of work, but at least I think y'all have convinced me that it's not a complete lost cause.
>>Cold in Gardez >>Ratlab >>Southpaw
Yeah, despite my faint praise, this was third place in my voting. (Granted, I got a really unusual draw this round. Two of the DQs were on my starting slate, and out of the next 11 stories I pulled, only two of the ones I read ended up making finals.)
I'll be really interested after voting's over to see what the score spread is on this one.
>>Bradel
Definitely keep working on this one! The sense of place is fantastic and the tone and prose are great. To use a photography metaphor, you've lined up a great shot, I think it just needs some refocusing.
And that picture you linked is indeed marvelous.
Yeah, despite my faint praise, this was third place in my voting. (Granted, I got a really unusual draw this round. Two of the DQs were on my starting slate, and out of the next 11 stories I pulled, only two of the ones I read ended up making finals.)
I'll be really interested after voting's over to see what the score spread is on this one.
>>Bradel
Definitely keep working on this one! The sense of place is fantastic and the tone and prose are great. To use a photography metaphor, you've lined up a great shot, I think it just needs some refocusing.
And that picture you linked is indeed marvelous.
>>Bradel I'd love to read your re-work of this story if/when you decide to go through with that.
And that is an awesome photo. I didn't quite imagine the quality light (I can only capture sunsets here in the Bay Area, and they aren't often much to write home about) but otherwise that was pretty much how I imagined that frame.
And that is an awesome photo. I didn't quite imagine the quality light (I can only capture sunsets here in the Bay Area, and they aren't often much to write home about) but otherwise that was pretty much how I imagined that frame.
“Okay Bradel! It’s time.” Cried out a hyper slim white colt. Waving at his computer screen. “You did one for me, so I have to return the favor.” His hooves laid along his keyboard. Speaking out at the camera with a curling set of lips and a tone that held onto the air with a wisp of excitement. “Just hang on a moment and-OOHF!” A cry of agony filled the air as the colt swings his face into his keys. Hearing the crackling of plastic pop back into place. Several keys hitting their mark as they either left marks or stuck to his face. The little colt lifts up his muzzle to show his unfaded smile had not changed one bit. His white coat showing heated signs of pain that coursed throughout his inflicted areas. His cheek housed a backwards keyboard shell as well as his nose. Both now missing from his beloved device. “I deserve that. Now on with the review!” Remedy rose his right hoof into the air and gave out one final groan of despair as he peeled off the two keys to attempt to repair his board.
POSITIVES
-Effort
The story shines in the aspect of the writer’s efforts. Showing how much time went into thinking about these scenes and how we may approach it as readers. From the proofreading to the word usage there is a lot to learn here. Showing skill in many artistic traits for writing. The story is basically a man trying to find enlightening picture moments of humanity. All in a sake to capture it for his own collection. While it sounds basic, the content showing all of this is well adapted to this simple summary. Fluffing it out to where we get a real story. The writer clearly covers almost everything in his story and teaches his readers where they might improve on. If I was teaching a writing class. I’d present this story and break it down into elements for my students to learn from. This is a must read for those trying to improve on their own techniques.
-Flow
The story runs smoothly having a nice feel to it as the character switches from one scene to the other. Stating a moment of time has passed by. Needing barely an explanation as to what this man is trying to do or why he is there. It’s not confusing and keeps your attention on the entire plot the whole way round. While this makes for a good easy read, it makes it difficult to keep your eyes open during it. I do quite a bit of poetry and found this one to be a good bedtime story, or as stated before an excellent story to learn from. It’s a remarkable tale that is great for times when you wanna relax lay back and drift away. Though I found the lack of any climax whatsoever seemed to drive this story down a bit. With no struggles on his traveling journeys and very little interaction with others, the character is driven to a sort of bug like feel. Moving place to place, doing it’s own thing. It’s entertaining to watch for a bit. Ending up with just little to feel or think about. Having a better flow with small ordeals would have made this pop out in the way it needed to. Example being, having money issues. Having to trespass through certain property. Maybe traversing through dangerous environments? It wouldn’t break the viewpoint of your story but it would make the audience feel more for the character.
-Morals
This story rides on the fact that it teaches good types of mentalities towards admiring life and things created by human hands. It’s no wonder why this character happens to prefer being alone, as everything around him looks damaged or is just left to gather dust and crumble away. Even his attempt at trying to spread his lesson through the passing of his camera. He knew what might happen to his camera, he knew that there was a possibility of this woman to just not take it up. But he shared that moment with her. Even if she didn’t understand it. He shared it according to his own morals. His own beliefs. I know I’m heavily talking about this when the story doesn’t mention it. But that’s the lesson hidden in the words. It’s what makes this story beautiful to read and experience. The lessons aren’t expressed to where it’s obvious. It takes some time tothink about. I’m probably overthinking this but it points it out either way with how everything comes together.
NEGATIVES
-Flair
It just felt like this story didn’t have much to keep itself going. It’s beautiful and well written, but didn’t have the necessary things to keep me wanting to read it or pick it up again. Minus the lacking of dialogue and interactions, the read felt like something from a documentary. Which is much more entertaining from a textbook read, well for me at least. A story should feel like a wave. Start out with a small burst of wind and gradually gaining effect to turn into a small curve of water. Increasing in size until it’s big enough to lash out against sand. I mention this because within that wave surfers may want to ride it boogeyboard or not. Fishermen will use waves hitting against the sand to gather bait or control the flow of fish. I for one did not see a wave large enough for me to do either. It needs to capture my attention to where I want to interact with the story. It can leave me breathless, but let’s face it. Breathtaking moment usually come rarely and only last for about minutes. Whereas something fun and exciting will make you wanna write more about it, or just talk about it on end. You affect me to where I won’t be able to stop thinking about it, then you’ve done it right.
-Conflict
Hm. No villain, no self doubt, no lesson to be learned here? It doesn’t seem to be a problem for it. The story works out beautifully without there being any. And it even gives reasons as to why there are no struggles with the story. The world is trying to minimize its population, as well as being torn by war and natural occurrences in nature. Which leaves this future world quite empty in certain places that use to be populated immensely. Which is why we see ruins of a school in one scene and then looking over a desolate forest area recovering from fallout of a devastating weapon. Reasons aside, this story is only suffering on missing traits. This read feels more like a poem, a haiku. To enjoy now and maybe share with someone if there’s a meaning behind it. Though we don’t seem to get a clear one. From what I get from this story’s lesson is. That life is precious. Traditions and moments matter. That we must cherish them rather than destroy and forget. To capture those same moments before they fade away. Much like how our hero here captures and achieves his goal before turning it over to another soul. This type of adventure has no conflict. Leaving little to think about other than continuing your hobby? It’s a mix for me, but hit in a small way.
“I hoped you enjoyed it.” Remedy said as his eyes averted his screen. His smile remained small as he rocked his body back and forth in a swing of shame and embarrassment. “I know, I did.” Those purple hued orbs shifted back into place. Paying attention at the product before it. “Listen-.” Remedy began as his weak smile escaped his lips. “I’m sorry for how we first met and all ‘that’. But I really do like writing. I was just surprised is all!” His voice grew in intensity. Finding that his words began to increase in volume at his explanation of an apology. Trying his best to remain calm. Though peace averting him. Avoiding him like a plague as he knew what damage had been done. “Just! Just, thank you for everything. I wouldn’t have experienced this wonderful group, without your guidance.” Remedy smiled once more. Feeling his cheeks curl up as his lips grew in length. His hooves typing away recording more of this precious genuine moment. “Next time right?”
POSITIVES
-Effort
The story shines in the aspect of the writer’s efforts. Showing how much time went into thinking about these scenes and how we may approach it as readers. From the proofreading to the word usage there is a lot to learn here. Showing skill in many artistic traits for writing. The story is basically a man trying to find enlightening picture moments of humanity. All in a sake to capture it for his own collection. While it sounds basic, the content showing all of this is well adapted to this simple summary. Fluffing it out to where we get a real story. The writer clearly covers almost everything in his story and teaches his readers where they might improve on. If I was teaching a writing class. I’d present this story and break it down into elements for my students to learn from. This is a must read for those trying to improve on their own techniques.
-Flow
The story runs smoothly having a nice feel to it as the character switches from one scene to the other. Stating a moment of time has passed by. Needing barely an explanation as to what this man is trying to do or why he is there. It’s not confusing and keeps your attention on the entire plot the whole way round. While this makes for a good easy read, it makes it difficult to keep your eyes open during it. I do quite a bit of poetry and found this one to be a good bedtime story, or as stated before an excellent story to learn from. It’s a remarkable tale that is great for times when you wanna relax lay back and drift away. Though I found the lack of any climax whatsoever seemed to drive this story down a bit. With no struggles on his traveling journeys and very little interaction with others, the character is driven to a sort of bug like feel. Moving place to place, doing it’s own thing. It’s entertaining to watch for a bit. Ending up with just little to feel or think about. Having a better flow with small ordeals would have made this pop out in the way it needed to. Example being, having money issues. Having to trespass through certain property. Maybe traversing through dangerous environments? It wouldn’t break the viewpoint of your story but it would make the audience feel more for the character.
-Morals
This story rides on the fact that it teaches good types of mentalities towards admiring life and things created by human hands. It’s no wonder why this character happens to prefer being alone, as everything around him looks damaged or is just left to gather dust and crumble away. Even his attempt at trying to spread his lesson through the passing of his camera. He knew what might happen to his camera, he knew that there was a possibility of this woman to just not take it up. But he shared that moment with her. Even if she didn’t understand it. He shared it according to his own morals. His own beliefs. I know I’m heavily talking about this when the story doesn’t mention it. But that’s the lesson hidden in the words. It’s what makes this story beautiful to read and experience. The lessons aren’t expressed to where it’s obvious. It takes some time tothink about. I’m probably overthinking this but it points it out either way with how everything comes together.
NEGATIVES
-Flair
It just felt like this story didn’t have much to keep itself going. It’s beautiful and well written, but didn’t have the necessary things to keep me wanting to read it or pick it up again. Minus the lacking of dialogue and interactions, the read felt like something from a documentary. Which is much more entertaining from a textbook read, well for me at least. A story should feel like a wave. Start out with a small burst of wind and gradually gaining effect to turn into a small curve of water. Increasing in size until it’s big enough to lash out against sand. I mention this because within that wave surfers may want to ride it boogeyboard or not. Fishermen will use waves hitting against the sand to gather bait or control the flow of fish. I for one did not see a wave large enough for me to do either. It needs to capture my attention to where I want to interact with the story. It can leave me breathless, but let’s face it. Breathtaking moment usually come rarely and only last for about minutes. Whereas something fun and exciting will make you wanna write more about it, or just talk about it on end. You affect me to where I won’t be able to stop thinking about it, then you’ve done it right.
-Conflict
Hm. No villain, no self doubt, no lesson to be learned here? It doesn’t seem to be a problem for it. The story works out beautifully without there being any. And it even gives reasons as to why there are no struggles with the story. The world is trying to minimize its population, as well as being torn by war and natural occurrences in nature. Which leaves this future world quite empty in certain places that use to be populated immensely. Which is why we see ruins of a school in one scene and then looking over a desolate forest area recovering from fallout of a devastating weapon. Reasons aside, this story is only suffering on missing traits. This read feels more like a poem, a haiku. To enjoy now and maybe share with someone if there’s a meaning behind it. Though we don’t seem to get a clear one. From what I get from this story’s lesson is. That life is precious. Traditions and moments matter. That we must cherish them rather than destroy and forget. To capture those same moments before they fade away. Much like how our hero here captures and achieves his goal before turning it over to another soul. This type of adventure has no conflict. Leaving little to think about other than continuing your hobby? It’s a mix for me, but hit in a small way.
“I hoped you enjoyed it.” Remedy said as his eyes averted his screen. His smile remained small as he rocked his body back and forth in a swing of shame and embarrassment. “I know, I did.” Those purple hued orbs shifted back into place. Paying attention at the product before it. “Listen-.” Remedy began as his weak smile escaped his lips. “I’m sorry for how we first met and all ‘that’. But I really do like writing. I was just surprised is all!” His voice grew in intensity. Finding that his words began to increase in volume at his explanation of an apology. Trying his best to remain calm. Though peace averting him. Avoiding him like a plague as he knew what damage had been done. “Just! Just, thank you for everything. I wouldn’t have experienced this wonderful group, without your guidance.” Remedy smiled once more. Feeling his cheeks curl up as his lips grew in length. His hooves typing away recording more of this precious genuine moment. “Next time right?”