There are no rules in photography...except!

[Matt. K]

Never take a portrait of someone with a brickwall as the background.

Prove me wrong.

[Greg B]

What about a contextual portrait of a brickie?

What about a severely unfocused brick wall providing pleasing abstract colour?

[Matt. K]

No and no. They would stink.

[phillipb]

Sounds like a great challenge for the competition.

[Matt. K]

It would be a challenge with a lesson. I think we would all gain something by trying that which is known to be usually poor.
Go for it. Let's stretch the frontiers.

[gstark]

No and no. They would stink.

Actually, that's a very subjective comment.

They might, or they might not.

A portrait of, say, Clapton, against a graffitied brick wall proclaiming "Clapton is god) (around 1978) would be very contextual and effective.

[Nnnnsic]

Never take a portrait of someone with a brickwall as the background.

Prove me wrong.

I'll ask Evi for a copy of one of her portraits... I'm pretty sure they have a brick wall in the background.

And they work.

And I'm cleaning up these threads later on.

[Killakoala]

The cover to 'Wings - Band on the run' had the band in front of a brick wall.

Oh and resivoir dogs also comes to mind.

[Matt. K]

All
Show me an excellent portrait taken against a brick wall. I care not who took it.

[gstark]

All
Show me an excellent portrait taken against a brick wall. I care not who took it.

Matt, as I said earlier in this thread, this is very subjective.

Who decides what is "excellent"?

An image may be technically excellent - correct exposure, good wb, etc, but the aesthetics may suck. Alternativel, the neg might be thin, poor wb, camera shake, out of focus, but some might say it looks great.

As Paul Simon said, one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

[Raydar]

The viewer will all ways decide weather its great, not bad or sh^t.
If you like what you are looking at, that’s all that counts in my eyes

My thoughts

Cheers
Ray

[Onyx]

Never take a portrait of a brick wall with someone in the background - prove ME wrong!

[phillipb]

Never take a portrait of a brick wall with someone in the background - prove ME wrong!

That's OK, very easy to fix in photoshop, just open in photoshop, press the little white X in the red box on the top right hand corner and like magic no more person behind the brick wall.

[redline]

we should start posting something to prove this worng or to support this theory

[xerubus]

i think they all work quite well ... the brickwall helps with the feeling the photographer wanted.

[owen]

Nice examples there.

However it sounds remarkably like an essay topic for a photography course

[Geoff Marland]

One rule that I learned when I first started taking photos quite a few years ago - The subject moves not the camera - hold the camera as still as possible to avoid camera shake.

That leads me to one of my pet peeves - the socalled expert writers for camera reviews in magazines who rave about how a camera is so compact it can be used one handed - but no thought that the user will not know to take extra care to combat the shake.

[MattC]

Brick walls.... Hmmm... Got a few of those in my album. Some work, some not. Those are nice examples posted previously.

One thing that I do not photograph is women with a mouth full of food or about to stuff that big slice of pizza (for example) into their mouth. If I do, they will generally hate me for it and I never get to point a camera in their direction again.

Cheers

Matt