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Author Topic: All Cracked Up  (Read 1924 times)

David Eckels

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All Cracked Up
« on: August 19, 2017, 03:04:38 pm »

Comments?

Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2017, 04:34:29 pm »

Hi David,

I really like what you have done here and please forgive me having a poke around with one of your images, but for me at least, I didn't think the gap at the top right brought anything to the composition, in fact it detracted from it if I am honest, as it kept drawing my eye to it. Also you had the highlights a little too bright IMHO. So I have had a little pull and a push around with your image, to show how I would have shot it had I been stood at the side of you. Now that is not saying my way is the best way, or that it is better than what you have done, it is just that I like to fill the frame with the subject if I can.

So not really a critique of your image, as much as me trying to show you how I prefer to shoot this type of abstract image, but using your image as an example kind of thing.

Dave
« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 04:38:54 pm by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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David Eckels

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2017, 10:48:39 am »

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.

luxborealis

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #3 on: August 21, 2017, 12:12:54 pm »

It's an excellent study, David, with or without the gap at the top.

If I had seen only one of either photo, it would have been excellent. Now that there are two versions to compare...hmmm...

As a landscape photo (albeit, an abstract landscape and highly pruned), I find the gap provides an additional dimension and leads me to wonder what's beyond. As strictly an abstract, the photo is better without the gap.

Great seeing!
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David Eckels

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #4 on: August 21, 2017, 02:09:13 pm »

It's an excellent study, David, with or without the gap at the top.

If I had seen only one of either photo, it would have been excellent. Now that there are two versions to compare...hmmm...

As a landscape photo (albeit, an abstract landscape and highly pruned), I find the gap provides an additional dimension and leads me to wonder what's beyond. As strictly an abstract, the photo is better without the gap.

Great seeing!
Another admired photographer! Thanks, Terry. Now I have a dilema! ;)

RSL

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #5 on: August 21, 2017, 03:19:47 pm »

I'm with Terry. The gap needs to stay!
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David Eckels

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #6 on: August 21, 2017, 04:28:36 pm »

That's three!

Jeremy Roussak

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #7 on: August 21, 2017, 07:38:10 pm »

That's three!

Four (well, three and me).

Jeremy
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Farmer

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #8 on: August 21, 2017, 07:42:09 pm »

Don't mind the gap!
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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #9 on: August 21, 2017, 07:49:55 pm »

As is often the case, Terry has clearly enunciated what my mind was groping for.
Either version is excellent, but I, too, would keep the gap.

Eric
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2017, 07:56:56 pm »

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
« Last Edit: August 21, 2017, 08:15:58 pm by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
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farbschlurf

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #11 on: August 22, 2017, 03:39:09 am »

Interesting ...

I see two very different pictures, despite of the small changes made. Basically the spontaneous reaction is also, the gap is good. But maybe this is just because this was what I first saw.

What came to my mind and wasn't discussed here, is another possibility. Right now the "gap" is just a gap, hardly anything to see there. I guess there's rock, or something? What about when brighten this spot just as much, so you can see the actual rock? The gap would be less of a gap than and add more to the picture.
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brandtb

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #12 on: August 22, 2017, 10:28:49 am »

Dave, nice that first one
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David Eckels

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Re: All Cracked Up
« Reply #13 on: August 22, 2017, 11:52:07 am »

Thanks for the interesting comments, all! In the end, I decided to go with the gap, but I lightened it just a bit in final. That decision, mindful of Dave's comments, was based on my desire to be true to my original "vision" of this shot; it was not intended fully as an abstract. I have one of those with glacial cracks already. I remember being fascinated with the bluish chunks of glacier and the strips of black gravel captured in the ice, but also that edge that forms against the "just beyond." It turns out not to be a rock but a glimpse of an evergreen forest lit by the afternoon sun. I filled in the other gap referenced above because I felt that one WAS distracting. I think distraction can sometimes be a useful compositional tool. Heresy perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.

Ironically, Dave's comment about "isolating" the subject and filling the frame was what pushed me over the edge to include the gap rather than the "votes" in favor of including it. One of the things I discovered in this Alaska visit, were the contrasts involving earth, and ice, and sky, and mountain, and sea, light and dark, smooth and jagged. You get the idea. In a way it reminded me of Death Valley in that regard. Thanks again for helping me think about this.
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