Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: RSL on August 04, 2014, 12:25:31 pm
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Beautiful rock, but the photo comes across as a snap from the roadside as opposed to the work you usually share with us.
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You're right, Terry. It's exactly that, a snap from the roadside. But the road is a path and a long climb, especially with a camera and tripod., and I've been up there again and again waiting for an open sky behind me and a reasonably good cloud formation in front of me. So let's look at the Ansel version of the picture. That better?
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It feels a bit uninspired, either way.
Peter
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It feels a bit uninspired, either way.
Peter
Agreed.
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Well, after all, it's landscape, Terry.
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Well, after all, it's landscape, Terry.
"Them's fighting' words!" ;)
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It feels a bit uninspired, either way.
Peter
Hi Russ - I much prefer the B&W version, it certainly adds to what otherwise, as the other guys have said, a not too interesting subject.
I always found the "medium size" landscapes the most difficult. The grand big ones and the intimate small ones seem easier to take. I would bet that there must be something really interesting much closer to all those cut rock surfaces...
William
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Well, after all, it's landscape, Terry.
From the hand of RSL...
Peter
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I always found the "medium size" landscapes the most difficult. The grand big ones and the intimate small ones seem easier to take.
Right, William. The big stuff is always easier, and you also can make life easier by concentrating on a very well-defined subject. If I take the trouble to walk in close to that quarry face on the left, with the short flight of steps carved into the rock, I'll end up with at least the equivalent of Ansel's El Capitan, provided I can increase the contrast enough.
In the meantime, here's some big stuff. This one got put on a local tourist brochure.
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... a not too interesting subject...
The subject is interesting. After all, it's a Half Dome. The interpretation, however...
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Some subjects are easy to make look good - this subject is more difficult and yet it's a subject that is fundamentally interesting from where I sit.
I have never been there so won't hazard a guess at how to do it better Russ.
Guess it is good to get us thinking about some of these more challenging motifs.
Mal
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Let's hear from Slobodan. I gather from what he said that he knows how to improve the "interpretation."
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Let's hear from Slobodan. I gather from what he said that he knows how to improve the "interpretation."
Russ, as you often state, a photograph is made at the moment of pressing the shutter. Whether it can be improved in post is a matter of debate (I think it can), but as you often say as well, no amount of post processing "magic" can save a blah photo.
Interpretation - the one I am talking about, however, starts even before you press the shutter, with a choice of subject, standpoint, lens, exposure, weather, lighting, etc. None of which can be significantly improved in post.
A road-side snapshot of landscape is no better than a "tourist" shot of street.
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A road-side snapshot of landscape is no better than a "tourist" shot of street.
Of course! Why didn't I think of that? That explains why "Moonrise Over Hernandez" is so bad. Ansel shot it from the roadside. Even worse, he shot it from his vehicle.
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Of course! Why didn't I think of that? That explains why "Moonrise Over Hernandez" is so bad. Ansel shot it from the roadside. Even worse, he shot it from his vehicle.
Not Quite!!! Because something is shot from a roadside doesn't make it automatically bad. Adams is an inspired work for all the right reasons and your example was not.
Peter
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Thanks, Peter. You may not like this picture, but you made my point. "Roadside" has nothing to do with it.
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Thanks, Peter. You may not like this picture, but you made my point. "Roadside" has nothing to do with it.
This is about the Winogrand/monkey cam thread, eh? I'm not sure that snapping one of the same vistas as Adams did, and incurring the minimal amount of work possible to do so, is really the final word in the debate ;)
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say, James. Sounds as if you're suggesting this is something Adams shot?
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Of course! Why didn't I think of that? That explains why "Moonrise Over Hernandez" is so bad. Ansel shot it from the roadside. Even worse, he shot it from his vehicle.
To shoot like HCB all one needs is to buy a Leica. To shoot like AA all one needs is to shoot roadside from a vehicle. Duh! Why didn't I think of that earlier?
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Of course! Why didn't I think of that? That explains why "Moonrise Over Hernandez" is so bad. Ansel shot it from the roadside. Even worse, he shot it from his vehicle.
Not Quite!!! Because something is shot from a roadside doesn't make it automatically bad. Adams is an inspired work for all the right reasons and your example was not.
Peter
Edward Weston, I believe has the last word here: "Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic."
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say, James. Sounds as if you're suggesting this is something Adams shot?
When I viewed the thread this morning I was not logged in - I see now that what you posted was your own shot in B&W. I mistook your, sarcasm, I guess, for what I assumed was an actual Adams shot of the same location. My bad for not wholly looking at the context (or the image) before posting.
All that said, others have made the point better than I could have anyway. It's not hard to take an uninspired landscape shot, just as it's not hard to take an uninspired street shot. That said, unless you are controlling the personalities, the setting, and the action in more than a passive way (i.e. more than searching for them or waiting in a given spot until they come along), I have a very hard time accepting that street is any less (or any more) banal than landscape, nor do I accept that competence in one subject matter is necessarily harder to achieve than the other. And after all, if we can edit Winogrand down to excellence, why not Adams?
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Edward Weston, I believe has the last word here: "Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic."
;D
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Okay, here's another one from the same shoot, along the same difficult, quite vertical, mountain path. This (and the other one) is a hell of a lot farther from the "car" than 500 yards. Oh, and James, you need actually to check some of Weston's photographs. Most of them were a lot farther than 500 yards from the car.
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Okay, here's another one from the same shoot, along the same difficult, quite vertical, mountain path. This (and the other one) is a hell of a lot farther from the "car" than 500 yards. Oh, and James, you need actually to check some of Weston's photographs. Most of them were a lot farther than 500 yards from the car.
Does finding his quote amusing mean that I'm not familiar with his work? It's a quip, not an artistic directive.
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Okay, here's another one from the same shoot, along the same difficult, quite vertical, mountain path. This (and the other one) is a hell of a lot farther from the "car" than 500 yards. Oh, and James, you need actually to check some of Weston's photographs. Most of them were a lot farther than 500 yards from the car.
I really like this one Russ, in fact I would go so far as to say it is the best landscape I think you have posted!
It does seem pretty sharp but I think that we have been down that road before with the D800. Very nice!
William
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"Blade" is indeed not bad at all, perhaps a bit left-side heavy compositionally.
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Thanks, Slobodan. You're right. That's why I let the sky get that dark in the upper right.
None of the pictures from this series are my best. No question about that. At the moment my schedule isn't letting me get downtown on the street or out on the prairie where there are dying towns. It's driving me nuts. So that's my excuse.
Thanks to you too, William. Yeah, I sometimes wonder about the sharpness when I look at a shot from the D800 that I've posted, but it really isn't over-sharpened. I went back to the original file and made sure the sharpening was minimal. Conversion to jpeg is at least part of the problem.