Textured Overlays - good idea or bad?

[Riaan van Wyk]

Nope, doesn't work for me Dave.

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

No, my take would be to continue working on that. First attempts are rarely the most successful ones. Mastery in any field requires a lot of work (the 10,000 hours "rule"), experimenting, and, yes, errors.

The panorama is as good as it gets. Very classical (in a positive sense), warm-toned, recognizable, competent. Again, nothing to nitpick.

Which brings me back to textured overlays style. I did suggest to continue experimenting in that direction, but I am now having second thoughts. Why? Simply because it denotes a very different style of photography from what you are apparently very good at. Again, I am not suggesting to completely abandon any other style or experimenting, but ultimately you want to build a style that works for you (both commercially and intimately). It is hard to imagine, say, Jerry Uelsmann build a career doing his style and simultaneously the style of, say, Peter Lik.

Yes I totally agree Slobodan, it is just that a little variety is the spice of life as they say and as mentioned, it was an experiment and I agree it is overcooked, which is a common problem with PS, when you know how to work it fully, it is difficult not to fully work it, but there are photographers out there who seem to make quite a successful life out of heavily pushing the artistic limits of their images, such as Rick Meoili and I do believe he doesn't actually do the processing himself, he has staff that do this for him.

And again thank you for your compliments, I always value your comments  

I strongly resent that remark.

OK Walter, I am sorry, it is just that as this is a forum for critique, I thought you appeared to have dismissed this image quite vigorously on the grounds of simply not liking it, not on its merits or otherwise or offering a reasoned critique, and that irked me and I am sorry. I should not post my experiments on here unless I am ready to accept all the comments, whether I feel aggrieved by them or not. You are entitled to your opinion and I was too hasty with  my reply

I think the effect is neat...maybe it is novel. It could under the right circumstances be fabulous.

This issue reminds me of modern film where special effects become the entire reason for making a movie, and the producers forget the characters and plot. Effects like this need to contribute to the overall effect...they need to be congruent with the subject matter.  I am not sure that this shot does a lot for me except make me say 'cool.'  That may not be enough.  

I feel this way about black and white conversions, sepia, self-evident HDR, exotic frames (virtual and real).  If you are going to bring some new element of style into the work of art it should contribute to the aesthetic. If it doesn't contribute to the aesthetic, the attribute (colors, framing presentation, whatever) should be transparent to the viewer.  When post processing becomes soo apparent, the work suffers by being distracted from the depth and substance of the image.  To borrow a technical photo idea, it is our jobs as artists, photographers and post processors to amplify the image's story with post processing without increasing distracting noise.  

Fike I agree, I got carried away with the process and lost the image in the effects, form over function you might well say.

I will continue with this type of image because I find it interesting and challenging and who knows I might have more success with it as time goes by and I am sure if I am anything less than successful with it, you will all let me know in no uncertain terms

Dave

[fike]

Rob, you are stark raving mad!!!  

You just said that character and plot doesn't matter in the movies.  I totally disagree.  

You also were the one to infer I said old (as in 20- or 40- or 75-year old) movies were better.  No, I referred to modern movies that only pay attention to special effects.  

I am not saying special effects are always bad. I am saying that in the absence of substance beneath those special effects, the movie will be hollow. For example Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (watch the entertaining and scathing 7-part critique of how bad this movie is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI) was awful, despite awesome special effects. Recent movies like The King's Speech or Black Swan establish that you can make a quality movie without an excess of implosions (it is no longer enough to have EXplosions, now we need IMplosions).  

Great photos need character and plot (literally or metaphorically speaking).  Special effects and filters need to reinforce their essence and substance, not distract from them.

[WalterEG]

OK Walter, I am sorry, it is just that as this is a forum for critique, I thought you appeared to have dismissed this image quite vigorously on the grounds of simply not liking it, not on its merits or otherwise or offering a reasoned critique, and that irked me and I am sorry. I should not post my experiments on here unless I am ready to accept all the comments, whether I feel aggrieved by them or not. You are entitled to your opinion and I was too hasty with  my reply
Dave

Dave,

I would have thought that I did offer some expansion on my remarks by stating my position on being told of the difficulty or dedication required to produce a work.  And then capped it off with a simple answer to the topic subject line of 'good idea or bad?' in much the same way others before and after me responded.

With or without the overlay I do not feel that the original image was much to rave about and over the years we have seen far too many attempts to save a lousy shot with processing trickery.

Nobody posting work for critique is going to benefit from the rush to gush or social niceties.  Each of us needs to take critique on the chin and learn from it, otherwise we are only deluding ourselves and would be better served posting images purely for bragging rights.

W

[Rob C]

Rob, you are stark raving mad!!!  

You just said that character and plot doesn't matter in the movies.  I totally disagree.  

You also were the one to infer I said old (as in 20- or 40- or 75-year old) movies were better.  No, I referred to modern movies that only pay attention to special effects.  

I am not saying special effects are always bad. I am saying that in the absence of substance beneath those special effects, the movie will be hollow. For example Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (watch the entertaining and scathing 7-part critique of how bad this movie is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI) was awful, despite awesome special effects. Recent movies like The King's Speech or Black Swan establish that you can make a quality movie without an excess of implosions (it is no longer enough to have EXplosions, now we need IMplosions).  

Great photos need character and plot (literally or metaphorically speaking).  Special effects and filters need to reinforce their essence and substance, not distract from them.

“You just said that character and plot doesn't matter in the movies.  I totally disagree.”

I accept your disagreeing, but that doesn’t make me wrong. I explained my rationale in my post and won’t repeat it here.

Movies need action pretty much by definition. Movies that attempt to limit themselves to talking heads or stage plays are probably best not made as movies but presented as stage work or book. I watched the King's Speech thing over and over again on so many news shows on tv (couldn’t escape the damned thing!) that I knew, and had confirmed for me over and over again, that I could never sit through such a film. If I did, then your opening line regarding my sanity would have been absolutely accurate! I can’t abide those stilted English accents; I detest the current trend to provincialism and regional accents just as much. There exists a decent mid-point that, oddly enough, does sometimes appear in a place where one might not expect it: some good tv commercials!

I don’t want to be bored by entertainment, a contradictory concept; real life can produce that effect all by itself and often does. I want to be uplifted, given a thrill and a buzz and allowed to fly with eagles, even if illusory ones.

I don’t care if cars don’t explode in quite the manner they are shown to do; it doesn’t break my heart if girls are impossibly beautiful on screen. I used to be absolutely delighted watching that gorgeous cousin in Dukes of Hazzard (Jessica Simpson), and would be tickled pink wondering how many cars they wrecked doing the jumps. It was a celebration of America and its ability to write off so much property in the name of cinematic joy. That was then. Today, we are all so much more world-weary; we’ve mostly seen everything there’s to be seen, and so effects per se don’t always do it… we require new ones that we haven’t seen before, and there’s the rub: it takes imagination on an ever greater scale. And we often get that wrong.

My wife and I used to have a subscription to a movie channel. We let it drop because it had ceased to interest either of us. Why? Not effects, but tone. Neither of us enjoyed watching cruelty, blatant sex or pretentious guff. The sad thing is, I suspect, that movies are probably for the very young, the more easily shocked the better or, perhaps, there really isn’t any real audience left: it’s happening in the games world instead.

Rob C