Pebble Hill Plantation Road

[Chris Calohan]

[popnfresh]

It's a really cool landscape. The only thing that bothers is the road. It takes up too much of the foreground and its high tonal values compete for attention with the trees.

I hate suggesting this, but I would crop it. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the anti-cropping league, I offer this alternative.

[Michael West]

I love the trees.

Id crop the image thusly

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

My first thought was exactly the same as Pop's.

But then I realized that the cropped version lacks the balance the original has. One way to diminish the visual dominance of the road, while keeping its "weight," necessary for the balance, is to vignette it. The most interesting part of the image is in the center, so vignetting it would also "close" the top bright corners, where image tends to "leak".

Also, this type of image depends heavily on color for full impact.

EDIT: Something like this:

[RSL]

+1. The croppers always have a field day with an image like this one, but, as usual, the original version ends up being the best version. Like Slobodan, I'd like to see the color version.

[amolitor]

I find myself saying this constantly, for some reason, so I am starting to suspect the problem is with me. Nonetheless:

This feels oversharpened. Not in the sense of ugly halos all over the place, but in the sense of too much local contrast to be credible. It feels like you were looking for separation (using sharpening, or color filters during conversion, or whatever) in the details, and got it in spades. It feels to me like too much. I know there ARE midtones in there, but the overall sensation I get looking at it is too close to halftoning to make me love it.

The overall contrast seems a bit much as well. The light feels like daytime, so why are all the trunks so black? I know, I know, give me Zones -2 through 12, or give me death. Sometimes a small amount of Zone 0 is better

I think the composition is quite lovely, but it's begging for a softer treatment. I want to feel southern heat and the slowness of life on the Kentucky Horse Farm (or whatever, I hope you get the idea) not the frenetic busyness of HOLY SHIT MOSS IT'S SO DETAILED!

Soften up the tones, push a bunch of the detail into the subtleties of the middle tones, let it feel warm and calm, let it breathe, and I think you might have something.

Uh, of course, it's your photo and you should do what makes you happy, and you should ignore bossy jerks like me.

[Jeremy Roussak]

I think the composition is quite lovely, but it's begging for a softer treatment. I want to feel southern heat and the slowness of life on the Kentucky Horse Farm (or whatever, I hope you get the idea) not the frenetic busyness of HOLY SHIT MOSS IT'S SO DETAILED!

I agree. I think this scene would benefit from an Orton-like treatment, to convey atmosphere rather than detail.

Jeremy

[popnfresh]

I like Slobodan's version the best. And I agree that it looks over-sharpened. Not sure I agree about it needing color. Hard to say for sure because I haven't seen it in color, obviously. But it looks pretty darn good in b&w.

[Tony Jay]

The composition certainly works for me.
A wonderful image overall.

With regards to comments about apparent oversharpening and detail I would like to see an optimally prepared print and make a judgement there.
I must also admit to a certain curiosity about what this image looks like in colour.
The fantastic texture in the does lend itself to treatment in black and white but as others have already said the colour version may be just as good potentially.

Regards

Tony Jay

[Chris Calohan]

[wolfnowl]

Well, since everyone gets an opinion, I wouldn't change a thing from the way it was originally posted.

Mike.

[Rob C]

Well, since everyone gets an opinion, I wouldn't change a thing from the way it was originally posted.

Mike.

Fair enough, Mike, but before posting the colour one, I would at least have cleaned up the horse shit on the road! Ruins one's breakfast, especially if one devours some of the packaged cereals available; you know, those wiry things that look like a ball of steel wool or the obvious alternative in the photograph?

Of course, it may not be fresh, possibly steaming, horse dung, but then that would be so much less potent. In India, they used to collect sun-dried cowpats and use them as cooking fuel. Very good idea that proves recycling isn't anything new, and that local cuisine is designed to suit local conditions,. That's why you don't find a good curry outside India.

Rob C

[Chris Calohan]

One of the things that makes shooting in the deep south (USA) is the green. I realize that in most places on earth where there are forests, there is green, but where we vary in that regard is the amount, and variety of green, given that most of where I live is just a little short of a boreal jungle.

Once, for an art project when I was in college, using a reflectance meter, we were instructed by our painting teacher to find as many different shades and tints of green in a six foot by six foot area (2 meters sq?) right out the back door of the studio. Then, of course, we had to recreate those colors and paint the scene. I filled the entire spectrum of my spotmeter and had to begin improvising visually from there. It was an exercise in futility, but we silly freshmen didn't figure it out for a few days.

The area in this photograph is substantially further north than where I live and it has been quite cultivated but even so, take a visual count of the variation of greens in this scene and one can begin to see the difficulty of shooting these shots in colour as opposed to B&W. This is why I chose to go to B&W even before I made the shot. It was the metering which was so difficult, even shooting on a 6-stop bracket. I blended layers rather than HDR as that is a technique I do not yet fully understand as per the dynamic range and thus the control. I will.

In my blend, I did no sharpening until the end. I did use a fair amount of contrast control and varying exposure levels intermixed with several visits to SEP. The final sharpening was quite moderate and I tend toward using a High Pass sharpening method of 3.0 and blending in soft at 80% opacity. Everything I do is a technique in progress, ever evolving.

Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments and suggestions. Everything helps, even when I do not agree because it makes me go back and dissect my image at each stage (I save every stage as a PSD until I am absolutely print happy with the end product, then I discard all but the last three edits). This is a wonderful forum in that at the very least, it makes you think.

[Jeremy Roussak]

This is a wonderful forum in that at the very least, it makes you think.

Now that's certainly true.

Jeremy