Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Jeremy Roussak on September 23, 2015, 02:28:19 pm
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Thoughts?
Jeremy
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My thoughts:
- Nice tones in the B&W conversion
- There seems to be an illusion it's leaning to the right, but it is straight (looks weird)
- No subject to settle on, my eyes keep wandering around without ever settling on a point of main interest.
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I agree with pegelli and I would add that the background is too much sharp in relation to the tower, making the latter to "blend" with the former.
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+1. But I like the subject. If you go back, Jeremy, try shooting wide open and subduing that background.
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That's one way to do it. Till then, if you don't have one like that handy, you might lose the right third of the frame.
I like the tower better than I do the walk. The back ground doesn't bother me that much on the left and I would rather not loose focus in the water.
Bruce
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Just a thought. Here's an example where color might offset the subject from the background, but obviously it's your shot, Jeremy and you were there.
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It looks to me that the walk is descending toward the right,
making it seem the tower is leaning. However, I did not see the illusion.
Regards,
Dale
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Just a thought. Here's an example where color might offset the subject from the background, but obviously it's your shot, Jeremy and you were there.
I agree that it would help to have a bit more differentiation between the top part of the tower and the grassy hillside behind it, and the monochrome conversion has probably caused this. Besides putting the color back in, and blurring the background either with the lens or post-processing, a third option could be some local tonal manipulation -- dodging and burning as we used to say with film. (I am not a fan of using OOF blurring as a way to keep attention away from uninteresting or unwanted parts of the scene, and often I like to be able to look around the scene rather than being told exactly where to look -- so "go back and shot wide open" is rarely going to be my suggestion.)
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If the BW conversion was in Lightroom or Photoshop, it should be easy to get more separation between the tower and the grassy hillside simply by playing with the slider(s) of the colors represented by the grass. I would make the grass a bit darker. If that helps, I don't think blurring is necessary.
I think it has pretty good potential.
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A person on the walkway might "improve" it?
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Thanks for the comments, all.
The weather was pretty dreary, so the colour version is flat and uninteresting. Access to the walkway (which I recall did slope upwards to the tower) is restricted.
I think the lack of differentiation is a fair point. Here's a version with the grassy area darkened a bit and slightly blurred. Better?
Jeremy
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I still prefer to be dissatisfied with the first one.
However, the walk is growing on me.
Modified 9/26/2015
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Yes. Better, and it doesn't look overprocessed.
P.S. Since I hadn't seen Bruce's version when I posted, I would like to make it clear that I was referring to Jeremy's new version.
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Yes, I like the second version better (and unlike some, I am fine with the rest of the composition, including the clean geometry of the empty walkway and its reflection).
P. S. I like Eric's idea about using color information to get the tonal separation for the grass – much more practical than my old-fashioned strategy of "burn in the grass"!
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A definite improvement, Jeremy. I think the main problem is that the white shoreline is too similar in tone to the bridge, and tends to hide the shape of the bridge. If you had nothing else to do, a month's work in Photoshop could overcome the problem.
You're right about the color version: arrggghhh!
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A definite improvement, Jeremy. I think the main problem is that the white shoreline is too similar in tone to the bridge, and tends to hide the shape of the bridge. If you had nothing else to do, a month's work in Photoshop could overcome the problem.
Ah, Russ, you put your finger on the principal defect of the shot. I do have other things to do; and I'm not convinced that the image would be worth the effort even if I didn't.
Jeremy