Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Dave (Isle of Skye) on March 25, 2012, 07:37:35 pm
-
Another one of my "just after sunset" images from a couple of nights ago taken at a local beauty spot, whilst drinking a nice cup of tea from a bone china cup and eating pate sandwiches - now you can't get much more civilised than that can you?
Dave
-
... taken at a local beauty spot, whilst drinking a nice cup of tea from a bone china cup and eating pate sandwiches...
That is also my definition of perfect wilderness... not more than 100 yards away from civilization (a.k.a. parking) ;D
Very serene scene, btw.
-
To me it looks as if it warrants something more like Champagne than simply tea. The pate sandwiches are right on.
Eric
-
All food issues aside, it looks like a beautiful place to be! Well captured, too...
Mike.
-
To me it looks as if it warrants something more like Champagne than simply tea. The pate sandwiches are right one.
Eric
Dear, dear, Eric. The man is English. Tea was perfect. The sandwiches should, of course, have been cucumber (on white bread, with the crusts removed).
It's a beautiful scene, nicely captured.
Jeremy
-
The man is a foreigner in a foreign land? It should have been a tattie scone. :)
-
In all cases: gin and tonic equates with civilized.
Champagne, as in the strict use of the term, is a beverage for footballers, bankers and assorted nouveaux, whereas beer is for plebs. Wine is for foodies and aperitifs for ladies-who-lunch. It's a simple etiquette: I'm going to write the book soon; maybe Michael will review it.
;-)
Rob C
-
In all cases: gin and tonic equates with civilized.
With your pinkie in the air? BTW this very much my kind of image and a .....well done.....is the correct response. :)
-
Very nice, but I'm concerned about the flatware used and what the pattern on the tablecloth might have been ;-)
-
In all cases: gin and tonic equates with civilized.
With your pinkie in the air? BTW this very much my kind of image and a .....well done.....is the correct response. :)
Pinkie in the air...
I presume you are thinking about Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe? If you are, then it is indeed fair to imagine that far more than a little finger might have been tempted to raise its pretty head! Even in Scotland.
;-)
Rob C
-
Very nice, but I'm concerned about the flatware used and what the pattern on the tablecloth might have been ;-)
We didn't actually use a tablecloth, which I know is a little uncouth of us and slightly unforgivable, but we had already decided that for convenience sake alone, we would 'make do' with paper doyleys.. ;D
Yes I really will have to try some tattie scones, which for all you Johnny foreigners out there, is pronounced sk-ons and definitely not sk-owe-ns like they say in the north of England, oh my word no..
But all joking aside, I was actually born in the north of England when the world was still in black and white and beer was two bob a pint and I worked for many years in the steel works as a rough arsed welder (a.k.a. thorny handed son of toil, as my mate used to refer to us all), and if you have ever seen the film 'The Full Monty', then that is exactly where I was born, lived and worked before Maggie turned off the power switch. I even used to frequent the actual working mens club that was used in the film, but oddly enough when I used to go there in the 90's, we never saw any men taking their clothes off, in fact it was quite the reverse.
And now I live on this beautiful island and awake each morning wondering if I could really be this lucky and fearing that one day, they will realise I have escaped from the matrix and try to take it away and push me back into the grinder.
Thanks for the feedback people, it is very rewarding to know you are liking what I am doing.
Dave
-
But all joking aside, I was actually born in the north of England when the world was still in black and white and beer was two bob a pint and I worked for many years in the steel works as a rough arsed welder (a.k.a. thorny handed son of toil, as my mate used to refer to us all), and if you have ever seen the film 'The Full Monty', then that is exactly where I was born, lived and worked before Maggie turned off the power switch. I even used to frequent the actual working mens club that was used in the film, but oddly enough when I used to go there in the 90's, we never saw any men taking their clothes off, in fact it was quite the reverse.
Interesting; were you, then, one of those unlucky chaps working in a company bereft of those suicide jockeys called shop stewards?
My own experience in, and of, engineering saw me watching the local steel works and the single car manufacturer next-door to it go bust because of their machinations… shipyards are another similar story, but can anyone, any government preserve in aspic the dinosaurs of yesteryear? (I can’t even afford to preserve one, and that one comes with a very strong vested interest!) So yep, very handy to be able to put the blame on someone who had both the power and the responsibility to stop the haemorrhage before it stopped the nation; and the balls that all of the men lacked, to do it.
But then, and as I well know, if you live in Scotland it’s almost obligatory to knock the lady; I await with interest the outcome of Scottish Independence. Perhaps that’ll be the breaking of Lloyds/HBOS and RBS at last; won’t that be egalitarian fun! Even more interesting will be the tax structures they come up with to pay for the glorious moments of madness. I keep thinking of that final finger on the Off switch.
An exciting future awaits.
Rob C
-
It's a nice image, but I'm not keen on the complete absence of detail in the low values.
-
It's a nice image, but I'm not keen on the complete absence of detail in the low values.
Pop, have you not been reading? We're not talking about the photograph any more. ;)
Jeremy
-
It's a nice image, but I'm not keen on the complete absence of detail in the low values.
Hi Pop,
I don't understand, they (the dark undetailed bits) are supposed to be silhouettes and shadows, as these parts of the scene were way outside of the dynamic range of the camera and so that is where I let them fall - but hang on there, you are not suggesting I should do an HDR version are you?
Dave
-
Another one of my "just after sunset" images from a couple of nights ago taken at a local beauty spot, whilst drinking a nice cup of tea from a bone china cup and eating pate sandwiches - now you can't get much more civilised than that can you?
Dave
Only by switching from tea to a perfect Manhattan.
-
Interesting; were you, then, one of those unlucky chaps working in a company bereft of those suicide jockeys called shop stewards?
My own experience in, and of, engineering saw me watching the local steel works and the single car manufacturer next-door to it go bust because of their machinations… shipyards are another similar story, but can anyone, any government preserve in aspic the dinosaurs of yesteryear? (I can’t even afford to preserve one, and that one comes with a very strong vested interest!) So yep, very handy to be able to put the blame on someone who had both the power and the responsibility to stop the haemorrhage before it stopped the nation; and the balls that all of the men lacked, to do it.
But then, and as I well know, if you live in Scotland it’s almost obligatory to knock the lady; I await with interest the outcome of Scottish Independence. Perhaps that’ll be the breaking of Lloyds/HBOS and RBS at last; won’t that be egalitarian fun! Even more interesting will be the tax structures they come up with to pay for the glorious moments of madness. I keep thinking of that final finger on the Off switch.
An exciting future awaits.
Rob C
Rob, I was not trying to pull on your political sensitivities there or anyone else's for that matter, yet I can only describe the world as it happened to me. I was made redundant three times and long term unemployment in the centre of a very large unemployment black spot, is not a happy place to be, you should try it. So for me Maggie is the representation of that period in my life, whether she was right or wrong and whether it did us all good in the end or not, the only thing I do know for sure is that it definitely hurt me and my family, so how else am I suppose to feel about her? And no, I was not in a union and never wish to be.
Dave
-
Rob, I was not trying to pull on your political sensitivities there or anyone else's for that matter, yet I can only describe the world as it happened to me. I was made redundant three times and long term unemployment in the centre of a very large unemployment black spot, is not a happy place to be, you should try it. So for me Maggie is the representation of that period in my life, whether she was right or wrong and whether it did us all good in the end or not, the only thing I do know for sure is that it definitely hurt me and my family, so how else am I suppose to feel about her? And no, I was not in a union and never wish to be.
Dave
Simply take on board what you've just said, and realise that shooting the messenger isn't going to solve anything. Whether you were in a union doesn't really matter too much either: I was put into a situation during the so-called apprentices strike on the Clyde, of 1960(or '59, but I think '60) where I had to choose to go out with the rest of them or continue working. I was about to get married, strikes were not on my agenda and I needed every penny I could earn. Worse, the strike was called at a lunchtime meeting of apprentices one day, a meeting where several hundred of us kids were addressed by a platform of maybe seven or eight others, some totally unknown to us and imported from the shipyards, who just told the crowd it was what they had to do. And they did. I did not. It was a sort of wild-west adventure getting into work and avoiding pickets.
I learned a lot from that; I discovered that unions can make people who are not members fall into line behind them; that challenging the mothers is a route to later isolation, and from that, that your best counsel is your own. I grew up quite quickly after that experience of 'industrial relations', and left industry just as soon as it was possible for me to so do.
I never bought into the flock mentality.
There was a period during my calendar years when the country was being ruled – I wouldn’t say run – by Callaghan, Wilson, Barbara Castle, Foote et. al. I used to negotiate my calendar contracts in February or so, with delivery aimed for the two weeks before Christmas. Inflation, under those crazed lefties, was running so high that it was impossible to give a fixed quotation. The printers were unable to give me a fixed price – how could I pass one on? So, the solution was to end all quotations with the little line: Final price dependent on rate of inflation at time of invoice. You can imagine the strength of mind that it took for companies to commit…
The country was in such a friggin’ mess that it took The Iron Lady three terms in office to rectify it. And after her and the weak people that followed, forever washing her blood off their hands, it all ended up with Blair and Brown sitting in power. Madre de Dios. And here we go again; memory serves as no teacher and every move to pull the land back from the brink is seen as some attack on the folks who are not millionaires! How bloody facile; how deceptive and how unreal. And there they go, the press, constantly on the attack, whoever happens to be in power. It’s their way: you sell papers by inventing scandal, passing off semi-truth as fact and ignoring anything that stands in the way of sensationalism.
I think I need a holiday from all of this crap; nothing changes and it’s always the same game with new characters.
Rob C
-
Hmmm... I would rather see this thread return to its original direction: discussing cookies & teas, champagnes & sandwiches, tablecloth patterns etc. ;D
-
I think Stamper has the correct critique of the photograph. I heartily approve of scones.
Eric
P.S. The photo is nice, too.
-
I don't understand, they (the dark undetailed bits) are supposed to be silhouettes and shadows, as these parts of the scenwere way outside of the dynamic range of the camera and so that is where I let them fall - but hang on there, you are not suggesting I should do an HDR version are you?
No, in fact, imo, HDR would have made it worse. The more I see of HDR the less I like it. I understand that what you did was a stylistic decision and not the result of ineptitude, it's just that it wouldn't have been my approach. But I still think it's a very nice image. I would have perhaps shot it in different light, so that the low values would have some subtle detail. But again, it's a stylistic decision. You got the effect you were looking for, so you obviously knew what you were doing.
-
Stunning light and a really nice composition.
-
so that the low values would have some subtle detail.
What a delight to hear the word "subtle" on a digital photo forum.
Lovely moment preserved, by the way.
Cheers,
-
Hi Pop,
No, in fact, imo, HDR would have made it worse. The more I see of HDR the less I like it. I understand that what you did was a stylistic decision and not the result of ineptitude, it's just that it wouldn't have been my approach. But I still think it's a very nice image.
I totally agree and think that HDR of the cartoonesque variety is dreadful, even though it appears to be just as popular on the net - why is that do you think?
I would have perhaps shot it in different light, so that the low values would have some subtle detail.
I have even been known to setup and take a shot in the better light, then wait until the sun is low enough to take a second shot and blend them later, but this takes nerve, because invariably there needs to be quite some time between the two shots and I am always looking for a better composition and find it so difficult to stop myself from re-framing the shot and blowing the whole setup. So having realised my own limitations, I now make the best of what is in front of me as it happens.
But again, it's a stylistic decision. You got the effect you were looking for, so you obviously knew what you were doing.
Thank you - much appreciated ;)
Dave