Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Krug on February 15, 2016, 04:54:37 pm
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The cold here for the last few days (negative teens) has encouraged archive searching rather than new shooting. Here are two from an approaching summer storm with dark clouds but still some bright sun ... and yes it really was that black at one stage. Critique invited.
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Wonderful clouds and sky in both images. The foreground, an empty backyard, doesn't seem to support the sky, but the sky is certainly worth the shot with its great 3-dimensionality and rich tonal range.
I note a difference in hue between the first (cooler greys) and the second (warmer greys). (?)
In photo 1, there appears to be a significantly darker area in the middle top which appears to be a processing artifact (too much darkening without adequate feathering).
Also, be wary of the "halo" around the foliage on the tight in photo 2. It appears to be a processing artifact, as well, caused by an adjustment brush painted to darken the sky, but avoiding the foliage, creating the brighter tone around the foliage. Again feathering with perhaps 65-75% flow plus auto mask and erasing of any extraneous brushing on the foliage.
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Thank you Terry - those are valid and useful comments - I am aware that processing is my greatest weakness and that I need to improve that - one of the main reasons that I post on this forum - comments that say 'nice' are indeed nice themselves but contribute little to learning.
On the matter of the 'empty' backyard I think that, compositionally, there is a case for the contrast of tone/impact with the very 'busy' clouds above - so that there are essentially three horizontal bands to the image - the quiet foreground, the dense but static separating trees and the turmoil and dynamism of the clouds (in both images but especially the second)
On a more general note this particular storm may well have passed over you yourself as it progressed through Ontario some months ago - and I have never posted this image before as Michael ( who was living at that time about 20 miles due North of where this image was taken) posted at the time a similar image as it passed over his home.
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Both nice cloudscapes, but as Terry says, a few processing issues, but nothing that isn't retreivable
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Nice leading lines!
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In both the foreground landscape isn't really interesting as a subject...although the one with bright downward sun casting shadow below the tree on right is somewhat better... along with the curving shape of land/and mowing lines and the little barn shed...is just a little better. Then the sky isn't really interesting in that one. The image with the really great cloud formation is not helped at all by the landscape below...it doesn't in any way support/or oppose well... that severe drama. These are perhaps good reference shots and processing is not going to "supply" structure and content. Maybe they might be better in color?