Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jeremy Roussak on May 01, 2011, 02:28:30 pm
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I've just returned from an entertaining trip to Arizona and Utah, so I now have the opportunity to invite your comments on some of my clichéd shots from that wonderful part of the world.
This one is a work in progress. I stayed at The View (which I strongly recommend, by the way) and hoped to get a wonderful, colourful, rich red sunset. Alas, I didn't. The mask I have added to make the sky more dramatic has darkened the western mitten a bit too much and there are a few other things I'd like to fiddle with. However, I present it here to ask if you think it's likely to be worth the time and effort.
Jeremy
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I present it here to ask if you think it's likely to be worth the time and effort.
In my opinion you've squeezed about as much as you can from this shot without going overboard. It's a nice shot as far as it goes, but I don't think you're going to make up in post what you were hoping to capture with your camera. From a purely aesthetic perspective, I'd like to see something interesting in the foreground that leads the eye back to those mesas that, while iconic and magnificent, we've all seen a million times before.
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Boy, is this hurting my tongue!
;-)
Rob C
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Don't bite so hard!! :o
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I rather like it. The sky has a hint of the Mitch Dobrowner look to it, which adds a lot.
I agree that perhaps the foreground could be cropped a bit, or else borrow one of Rob C's models to liven it up.
Eric
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I rather like it. The sky has a hint of the Mitch Dobrowner look to it, which adds a lot.
I agree that perhaps the foreground could be cropped a bit, or else borrow one of Rob C's models to liven it up.
Eric
And when he's managed that, can I please have her back (and the rest of her, of course)? She's been missing for far too long!
Rob C
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Jeremy
It may well be a cliche, but I will say this: If I had taken that picture, that is the one that would be hanging on my wall!
What I'm trying to say is that there may be thousands of pictures of say, Jennifer Lopez - but if I were lucky enough to get a good picture of her, that would be my favourite!
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Very very nice photo! I like the sky a lot, there's really not much else to do on your photo to improve it!
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Jeremy
It may well be a cliche, but I will say this: If I had taken that picture, that is the one that would be hanging on my wall!
What I'm trying to say is that there may be thousands of pictures of say, Jennifer Lopez - but if I were lucky enough to get a good picture of her, that would be my favourite!
But why would you want to shoot her in the first place?
Rob C
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Cliche? I really don't think so. Sure, these have been shot many times but I'm glad you took it as it is a damn good shot particularly the manner in which you have used B/W.
Alan
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But why would you want to shoot her in the first place?
Rob C
OK Rob, let's say Briggite Bardot then... ;)
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OK Rob, let's say Briggite Bardot then... ;)
Then that I would understand! In historical terms, of course.
;-(
Rob C
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It's obviously a well-known location, but also a moment in time. Those clouds for example will never be again.
Definitely a keeper!!
Mike.
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Thanks, all. I think I'll make a large print and put it on the wall for a while to see how I live with it (it's a 4-shot stitch so it can stand a bit of enlargement).
Eric, any comparison of one of my photos to Mitch's work is very flattering! I had him in mind as I was fiddling in Lightroom but I'm quite sure that he'd regard the weather as too ridiculously temperate to be worth photographing.
Rob, I'm afraid I don't understand.
Jeremy
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Thanks, all. I think I'll make a large print and put it on the wall for a while to see how I live with it (it's a 4-shot stitch so it can stand a bit of enlargement).
Eric, any comparison of one of my photos to Mitch's work is very flattering! I had him in mind as I was fiddling in Lightroom but I'm quite sure that he'd regard the weather as too ridiculously temperate to be worth photographing.
Rob, I'm afraid I don't understand.Jeremy
Understand? Understand what?
Mystified, (Mallorca).
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Understand? Understand what?
Mystified, (Mallorca).
Why your tongue was hurting. Sorry, I'm just being thick.
Jeremy
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Why your tongue was hurting. Sorry, I'm just being thick.
Jeremy
Ah, I dig you now! Sore from biting it, for saying nothing.
Rob C
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Ah, I dig you now! Sore from biting it, for saying nothing.
Rob C
Yes, I'd understood that. I just wasn't sure what it was that you were trying so hard not to say.
Jeremy
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Yes, I'd understood that. I just wasn't sure what it was that you were trying so hard not to say.
Jeremy
Okay, Jeremy, the Inquisition Chair is too much for me - I recant!
The thing I was trying to say but not say was that you'd chosen the title to the thread very well; also, that it fell neatly into my own preoccupation with inability to 'get' much landscape photography as having creative merit because all the shooter does is edit what's there. Sticking on pola filters etc. isn't creativity, it's just manipulation of God's original artwork. Eric made a reference to my stance on this thorny subject... As it happens, I was at a party last night with a mixture of artists and musos, and one of the lady artists I already had met is married to a guy who photographs. Both are of a generation between my daughter and my grand-kids, and it was fascinating chatting to the lad: having seen my site he said that he couldn't work like that, as one-off image-making on film, that all his work - he has done a lot of stuff for estate agencies - is done with PS ever-present in his mind, with the intention of multiple exposure and focus stacking etc...
I got the distinct impression that the psychology behind the things that attract people to photography has changed dramatically since my day; I admit that I have often written here that, were digital the norm when I was young, I might well have never felt the slightest desire to join the game; the visceral buzz from one's first print appearing in the tray is not even approached on a monitor.
But as with everthing, possibly the landscape genre too, it's all in the head of the photographer, and the imagined flaws are perhaps only in that space.
Rob C
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Ah, I see. I guessed it might be something like that.
Rob, we have different tastes in photography. I look at landscapes, even shots of places I've seen before or know well, and wonder at the beauty they portray. I may want to go to the place myself, to have a bash at creating my own version of the scene, or I may just look and marvel.
For me, fashion photography is as pointless as fashion itself, pretty though (some of) the girls may be; and portrait photography is interesting because of the identities of the subjects, not because the images are great. I'm one of the philistines (I admit it's probably a failing on my part) who can't see why Annie Liebowitz, to name but one, is fêted because she had access to famous people. There are some exceptions (Karsh's Churchill springs to mind, or Barda's Rattle), but not many.
De gustibus not est disputandum. If there's one certainty, it's that there's no "right" view.
On the other hand, this the "Luminous Landscape" site. I think I can be forgiven for posting a shot of scenery!
Jeremy
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"On the other hand, this the "Luminous Landscape" site. I think I can be forgiven for posting a shot of scenery!
Jeremy"
Nothing to be forgiven about; my views are only mine and don't count for squat. As I suggested, there could easily be a failure in my wiring and that's all there is to the thing.
Perhaps there is some confusion here: I don't claim to dislike landscape at all; I simply don't see it as creative. Like most everyone else, I've taken a few such pix but don't think of them as creative either, neither before, during nor after the event.This could well be because of stock shooting (think tourist views - think Mittens, Yellowstone, Benares, etc. etc. etc.) but I have no fond memories of anything of that genre that I have produced. On the other hand, almost everything I can remember to do with shooting models has got something I can recall with a certain fondness if not downright joy. (The rotten situations I forget at once!) I suspect that its the combination of location, beauty and doing somethig to make those factors produce something that wasn't there before we hit the scene and no longer existed when we wrapped. It's the combined efforts that are the creative part; even if the work ends up a failure, in which event creativity existed but we blew it.
Just an attitude; just a personal take. Exactly why I bit my tongue!
;-)
Rob C