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HoremWeb — Against All Odds
#budapest #crane #danube #duna #heavymachinery #hungarian #hungary #machinery #offence #offending #selectivecolors #ships #shipyard #sportsmen #steel #training #utility #ujpest #floatingcrane #budapesthungary
Published: 2018-01-30 21:45:31 +0000 UTC; Views: 546; Favourites: 8; Downloads: 0
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Description
What is your story on this? (Feel free to use your wildest imagination
)I have my evidences that I did this picture so please don't claim it yours, post, feed, scrap, grunt, reblog, tint, tumble or alter it, and don't use it (especially don't frighten children with it!). Oh, and never, I say never try this at your own bathtub. This image is dangerously copyrighted. If have any ideas, just ask me, but be prepared that I am really nice regularly.
And just let me know if you've found the cat. (It is really tricky.)
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Comments: 29
"Against All Odds" is a quite unique piece of photograph. We have a combination of black and white and colour which is giving a completely different vision to the image, highlighting the man in the kayak boat. This guy looks a little bit "out of the world" to me considering the colourful clothes and boat. With his fairytale-like appearance he is entering a world of concrete and steel. And if you think about it, he has a very tiny boat compared to his encounters here...
So while a lot of pictures are using empty spaces to create some kind of harmonic feeling, this piece of work is kind of the opposite, leaving the viewer almost infinite amounts of structures to look at and to look for a cat! While I like riddles and spend some minutes looking for the cat, considering also the habbit of cats not to dive or swim, I did not manage to locate this fluffy creature anywhere nearby - unless the cat was disguised as a man on a kayak!
As for improvements, there are a few elements to the image which are a little bit distracting to me because of their level of brightness. This includes the small part of the sky and the roof in the lower left corner.
PS: I cannot post this cat as long as I have not found the critique!
Let's try to deduce where the cat might be found. There is no way for a cat to drink from the water, thus we can exclude the water level. The cat can either be a passenger on the land or be a constant sailor on one of the boats. There are almost no land areas here, we can easily exclude the town in the background and the natural area on the upper left. Now I doubt that the artist had found the cat while looking through all that steel, which might suggest that the cat was somewhere nearby and was seen by the photographer before he was shooting the picture. I might be wrong but the cat seems to be in the middle of the right edge, right over "Kormanyallas".
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Thank you especially for the points of improvements, they are the most helpful part of the overall helpful critique! It is really important to know how others see the given image in general, but points of improvement are the real key.
I have to confess that the cat is a real bastard (excuse my Klatchian/French). There are (were) several cats. One was a very cute black one that I wanted to shoot (by camera) but moved behind us and hid. Another one patrolled the big ponton ship with the "Budapest" sign and that I've seen before and after the shot—but I cannot locate on the picture. (Perhaps it was a reversed ghost cat that is not visible on the pictures...) I placed the question to see if others may find it for me.
And as an inside joke, there is an "iron cat" under the "Budapest" sign. In Hungarian, my mother tongue, we call achor as vasmacska that literally translates to "iron cat". Don't even ask me why do we call'em this, but this is a normal dictionary entry .
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My pleasure!
I could concentrate even more on "improvement" ideas, but didn't want to be too intrusive! (some people might think "He thinks he knows everything...".)
I think depending on the purpose of a work, a critique can be completely different. Especially when it comes to the documentary art of photography, which is not much about aesthetics.
If you have a piece of work on which you really want all possible ideas I have, I can write a little bit more then!
Haha, so there was no chance for me to find the cat and I mistook the shadow on the right for one!
"Iron cat" sounds to me like an iron claw which is used to get some hold somewhere, maybe like a cat on the tapestry.
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Well, first and most importantly 
As to the photograph, it's clever and of course technically extremely well done. A weakness is that even with a rule of thirds and a golden section, the canoe-man isn't quite as prominent as i think is needed. But getting a shallower depth of field than this would probably have needed e.g. the 70-200 f/2.8 lens 
But this is a minor criticism on a superb photograph. When i can take photographs this well maybe i can be in a position to say more
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Hello, thank you for the detailed critique, it helps me a lot!
For the cat: there were several ones. One was a nice little black one that I tried to photograph but always got behind us. There were at least two others* aboard I think. One was lurking on the big ponton ship wearing the "Budapest" sign and always vanished among the steels. Another was definitely there right before and after the actual shot, on the port side of the ship. I actually saw them while shooting but not after. This strange phenomenon made me ask whether somebody can find this little villain
You know those photographs of ghosts that are people not visible in general but they appear on the pictures. Perhaps that vanishing cat was a reversed ghost: apparent in general but vanishing from the photos.
As I browsed for them I was aware that there are many cat-like figures and shadows like the one you mentioned by the wheel on the tug bargue, but they are actually parts of the ship like bollards and capstans.
And there is one that is obvious only for those who speak Hungarian: under the Budapest sign there is an anchor. The anchor is "vasmacska" in Hungarian that literally translates to "iron cat".
*I am actually not sure whether they were one or multiple cats. They colours seemed to be different but we were at a fair distance to be really sure.
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Thank you for replying. And yes, i could not be sure if i was seeing cats or not without downloading the larger size.
Even though i very much enjoyed a visit to the city/cities of Budapest some 15 years ago, and made sure to visit the Effervescing Baths, and even though i recently read a book by Péter Esterházy, and even though i had a Hungarian colleague for many years, i never got further than learning how to pronounce Hungarian words: “I cannot read the fiery letters,” said Frodo. So i am sorry, but i did not see that cat
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Hungarian is absolutely easy. It is the difference that is hard to cope with—we use and see way too many things differently than German (or Romance) languages. I usually help people on Duolingo who are fluent in English and try to learn Hungarian and the most difficulties are coming from their limited knowledge and usage on English. Some people says that English is poor with a limited vocab etc. but that is false—simply English has a tendency to over-simplify things and two third of the English vocabulary is left unused in the everyday life. If you, as a Canadian, speak French, too, you may understand that. Currently I started to study French and I experience the same: the casual vocab is more sophisticated for French, too. I accept if you don't have the urge to study Hungarian, but you miss something. Well, there are quite a handful things that are interesting but worth to miss like surviving a plane crash
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Thank you for taking the time to reply. Alas, i am not as good at learning languages as i’d like. When in the 1980s i started to learn italian i found it canceled out my French and for a time i ended up with neither.
You are right, many English speakers put very little effort into thinking about how they—how we—communicate.
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Azt hiszem, megvan a cica. Vagy legalábbis valami nem odaillő a kép jobb oldalán
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És a városnév alatt mit látsz lelógni a fedélzetről?
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Ááááh
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Az benne a quest
Amúgy volt "még" egy nagyon ari cicca, de az meg a hátunk mögött flangált. Azt kitalálni még ennél is nehezebb
Lesz a Lurdyban macskiállítás. Mész?
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Ahá!
Legközelebb őt is fotózd le
Nem megyek, a kisállat kiállításokat annyira nem kedvelem.
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Á, úgy csinált, mint a Troll-dalban a mekegő: folyton elosont
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Had people been stealing your stuff though? Or claiming you stole it?
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I have filed over 30 DMCA takedown action already, all of them fulfilled and there are many of my works over a pirate network that I cannot do anything against that because there is no owner or organizer behind that. I also found one of my nature shots among the winners of a contest with some cash prizes, under someone else's name. The amount was about $50 or somewhat less, so it was not the real bid deal, but I did the effort, I'd prefer to get the acknowledgements. And even $50 is good for something.
On the other hand, I am happy that I never had to prove that I did not steal (always difficult to prove that something did not happen) and I had only one DMCA takedown notice from Warner because in the tags of one of my work I attributed Tolkien as a writer of a book with a title that belongs to Warner now (they think—but author's rights cannot be taken). (This is the Halfing in non-Warner owned word.
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Oh god! That sounds like a pain in the ass! Guess that means your a bad ass shooter though if people are willing to steal your work
Haha omg! Yeah 
Yeah! True! Oh yeah I remember that! In non-Warner owned word? What you mean? Sorry
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A word that substitutes the original title that now is forbidden by Warner. You know, this is a bit strange.
Just imagine, Coca Cola had an advertisement back in the... IDK, perhaps in the 30s where they presented Santa Claus in different colour. Usually Santa was in blue, but almost in any colours around the world. Coca Cola presented him in red, with his boots and black belt with shiny buckle and the flowing white beard. Since then Santa Claus wears the costume that Coca Cola dreamed for him, and you hardly ever find other colours for Santa (except the lilac Santa for Milka).
Now imagine that Coca Cola sells the story rights to a movie company to create a film, let's say "Santa Claus vs. The Easter Bunny" how they fight each other to bring more joy to the children—and they end up party together on the Seychelles for the remaining part of the year. (Nice story, isn't it?
If I had enough public visibility for that I would call people to ban Warner for this act. I am a Tolkien fan. I was even among the founders of the Hungarian Tolkien Society. And I cannot name one of the books of my favourite author by its title?
(They also forbid the usage of the Tolkienian name of the tree-people and several other elements that went deep to the geek culture and fantasy and gaming.)
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Haha I got what you mean
Is that due to Hungarian law though? I don't think they have total legal control over it but is it one of those things of due to their power and money they could still take you to court over this just to outlast you and get their way? Either way that shit ain't right
Damn thats way too far! If your not making money off it they should have no say
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It is not about the money, at least not by nature and laws. The copyright is governed on the base of Berne Conventions and guidelines that root in them, but were modified many times. Most countries have their own versions on them, and the basic rule of thumb that both the rules of the creators' country and the rules of acceptors' country must be respected. In special cases the less strict rule applies first. For this case, the British copyright laws govern Tolkien's works, enforced by Tolkien Estate as an appointed organization. They sold some rules to New Line and Warner for the films. Warner's approach is something that you could use the title as Tolkien's property but it is also their property and they can forbid anything you could use to sip money from their pots. And as owners they can decide what it sipping from their pots and what isn't. UK, US and Hungarian copyright rules are very similar in most aspects, with minor differences. There is a major one: European Community denies the "Fair use" because it is mostly misinterpreted by negliance. Hungarian copyright laws follow this guideline, too. (Fair use is widely abused to re-post other's works, even for money, and stealing public visibility from copyright owners, or selling books and articles "for educational purposes only", or pretending a critique, etc. This is why it is denied in the EU. See almost the whole Youtube, Tumbler, facebook, etc.)
A side note: the work that I had to take down was a commercial work, a wall clock face design. I already earned an enormous sum of €1.28 with it as far as I remember. Yes, that is one euro twenty eight. (If anybody from Warner reads it: I am ready to pay this to Warner if they pay me for wasted time, efforts and the damage on my reputation. I already accepted to not use that title even if I am sure that they over-reacted it in my case.)
Anyway, Tokien Estate follows the approach you wrote in your last sentence. But they ask money if you quote Tolkien word by word let's say in your thesis. You have to pay per word so a paragraph (that is not too long for a thesis) can do a good damage on your budget. (I don't remember exactly but it was somewhere between .20 to .50 GBP/word.)
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I know what you mean. That sucks :/
Ah that is a good point, I forgot you were selling it. I can see why they went after you then. I still think thats ridiculous though 
Oh jesus that ridiculous. How petty some companies can be :/
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We still use forints here but I work with foreign companies and I am familiar with both euro and dollar prices
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Ah ok
I will have to wait on the other comments.. way too tired lol.
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All the three are fine for me
So, it is fine for me and I accept your help as help
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Fair point! So if I understand correctly, then you know I am doing it for our convenience
Glad you understand, you make good points
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Yes, I know and I appreciate it, too!
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