No apology necessary, Dave. I am just delighted to get helpful comments and examples, which is why I posted in User Critiques.
I thought about that gap and whether a content-aware fill was warranted or (omg!) cropping. I actually filled a smaller gap LOF. Posting here was intended to elicit precisely the sort of comment you generously provided. Thank you! As for highlights, I have been adjusting them high enough to just avoid clipping and deepening the blacks if necessary to spread out the histogram. The rationale for this is that I am preparing a Blurb travel book to commemorate Dad's 80th celebration with a trip to Alaska. These "settings" have worked well in the past.
I like the attenuation in highlights as you've shown it, but if I printed this and took into account ambient illumination when hung, it ends up too dark. Anyway, that's my reasoning.
I always appreciate comments, critical or otherwise, from photographers I admire! Still hoping to one day visit Isle of Skye; promise to look you up!
PS Is the apologetic tone in your critique due to a perceived hypersensitivity on my part? I hope not! Critique on! And thanks again; your evaluation settles the "gap" issue for me, too.
Hi David,
On the last part of your reply, no I wasn't being apologetic or worried about your hypersensitivity, mainly because I wasn't aware you had any hypersensitivity, but secondly and more importantly, because I did not want to come across as a "know-it-all" type of photographer giving out lectures on what is the best way and only way of doing things, it was more of an example of how I prefer to do it, rather than telling you how you should do it..
But on the subject of anomalies in photographs whatever they may be or not, depending on the preferences of the viewer of course. I can only relate a story that I remember from many, many years ago when I was a club photographer, when one of the old hands discussing studio style portrait photographs in a competition, who said that any mistake or perceived mistake within in such an image is unforgivable, as the photographer had complete control over each and every aspect of the image, the sitter, the lights, the camera and settings etc, so to take a portrait shot that is not as perfect as possible in every way, is wrong and unacceptable. Now I agree he was being just a little bit anally retentive there, but there was something in what he said that has stuck with me to this day. So when I am shooting something such as an abstract, where I have the time and control to fully work out every aspect of what is captured within the frame and how I am going to shoot it etc, than any anomaly within the final work is either a mistake on my part, or it has to have a really good reason for being there. In other words, it has to be there because I wanted it to be there because I thought it added something to the image. So gaps can work if they have a reason, such as perhaps leading the eye to something that adds to the composition, or perhaps for balance with an opposite gap etc. For instance, if you had a wild animal walking across the back of the scene on the land shown in that gap, then that would become an essential part of the image and take it up to a wow shot. But if there is nothing there other than an empty space and it could have been easily framed out at the time of shooting, then I feel it detracts as I want it to have a reason for being there and as I said, with that old photographers words still bouncing around in my head, if ever I have the time to really study and then fully design the shot, then I will always try to take the shot so it only contains the subject and try to frame out things I feel have no reason to be there or do not help the shot.
Now obviously each to their own and as I say, my way is not necessarily the right way or should it become your way, but it is the only way I approach this type of shot, so therefore is the only way I can critique this kind of shot as seen through my own preferences.
Russ would like it to remain there, because he likes to retain the 'truth' and the essence of that exact moment as you photographed it (I think), whereas I am saying that yes by all means keep the truth, but only after taking the time to frame out what you do not want, or that you think does not add to the shot before you take it and the fact that you have already said you had thought of trying to remove the gap with content aware fill, means you have already decided that you would prefer that it wasn't there, so all I am saying is next time you get a chance to shoot an abstract like this and you have time to do so, then try to make sure that every single pixel on your sensor, is only capturing something you do not want to change or remove.
..and finally let me just add a little more weight to my argument before everyone else jumps in, if you had taken the shot above but without the gap and then posted it up here, how many critiques do you think you would have received from fellow photographers, suggesting that the image really needs or would be greatly enhanced by having a small gap near to the top that led the viewers eye to nowhere?
Dave