Melodrama

[kencameron]

Storm over Queanbeyan

[francois]

The sky is very dramatic and having the bottom of this image so dark helps to focus on the sky.

[RSL]

Ken, I hate to be a wet blanket (actually I don't), but what about this picture made you decide to post it?

[Jim Pascoe]

Ken - I think I can see why you took this picture, but for it to work as presented it either needs to be given more contrast or otherwise we need to see something more of the land beneath to give it some context.  If there were houses, street etc below the sky might look menacing, but as has been said it does look a little flat and probably does not portray what you experienced - in my opinion..

Jim

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I allowed myself to slightly work on the toning...

Cheers
~Chris

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I like the parrot but the Scary Movie ghoul is a bit much.

Sorry - but I never saw that film ...

[kencameron]

Ken, I hate to be a wet blanket (actually I don't), but what about this picture made you decide to post it?

Good question - I think you are being too harsh on yourself when you describe it in terms of wet blankets . I sometimes go in for over the top processing and awkward framing in an attempt to present responses to "nature" that are around disquiet and discomfort, even disgust. This one is a stitch that is heavily edited and warped to make it smeary, and has the town scene just squeezed in at the bottom in a way that is obviously unbalanced. The lights are meant to look precarious, only just surviving. The title was an attempted hint at these intentions but as Isaac points out, it probably doesn't work that way. I like Chris's edit to up the contrast, but a certain muddiness is actually part of my intention - the image is intended to be ugly in a sort of post-apocalyptic way. I recently posted an abstract called "fissure" that arose out of the same impulse. I post them on Lula in full knowledge that it is largely a temple to a very different photographic impulse (and one which I don't for a moment denigrate), and am grateful for the interesting range of responses.

[kencameron]

No, it's just difficult to distinguish what's there.

Indeed. But improving it, in that respect, would move move it away from what I intended, as would Jim's suggestion of showing more detail below - which would also be an improvement in a very real sense. Of course, the intention may very well be misguided or misconceived. But it was what it was. The thing is, there are so many photographs, many of them very fine. Why take another one? Force of habit, of course, and skilled emulation, but one of my answers is to do with hunting down a certain kind of not very pleasant, but for me insistent, emotion. This seems to express itself as wilful perversity in post processing. A recommendation for a good therapist is probably a more likely response than any kind of aesthetic pleasure.

[Bruce Cox]

Well "ugly in a sort of post-apocalyptic way" has been a wildly popular style in yoof culture for (I don't know) 20 years.

So how do you make a small gray picture have an insistent presence?

Photographing as therapy: Minor White?

I thought you could be right about Minor White, so I googled him and his very gray WATERFALL in the rain nearly cured me.

Bruce

[Bruce Cox]

Not photographs as therapy! Photographing as therapy.

Photography without photographs?

Bruce

[Bruce Cox]

darker?

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Wild Hunt !
Cheers
~Chris