Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Chairman Bill on July 04, 2011, 03:52:19 pm
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Self-evidently a fence & gate. This particular one being near to Larksbarrow on Exmoor, SW England. The temptation is to shoot wide vistas of rolling moorland, or concentrate on shots of the windswept & sometimes wind-battered & twisted trees. Here is obviously the hand of man on the landscape.
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This looks like any number of gates one might see in the countrysides of many countries. Your description of its location is very intriguing, but how does it have anything to do with the picture itself? What you're showing us is completely divorced from the spectacular landscape you describe. All I see is an ordinary gate in the midst of very ordinary grass, underneath an unremarkable sky.
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I rather like the rhythms of the gate, but I would like the camera to have been pointed a bit higher to include a tad more sky and less of the very bottom. The gate is a bit too high in the scene to feel balanced to me. (Perhaps this is one of the rare instances in which the "rule of thirds" may make some sense.)
Eric
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Bill, I like it just as it is. The hand of man always is the most important element in a landscape, and in this landscape you've concentrated on what's most important. At first I tended to agree with Eric, but after viewing the picture for a while I came to the conclusion that static silence, which is the whole point of the picture, is enhanced by placing the fence and gate in the middle ground.
Good job!
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All of which proves that if you don't like someone's critique, wait a while & a more amenable one will be along shortly ;)
Moving on ... subject matter. It seems as if nobody photgraphs the gates & fences that dot the landscape, yet often there is some interesting detail in the weathering of the wood, or the juxtapositioning of hard, regularity in a countryside of largely soft, undulating forms. I just thought I'd give it a go, & photograph this form as well as the more usual landscape.
Composition - I was tempted to have a large expanse of (not overly interesting) sky, moving the gateway to the lower third of the frame, but decided I quite liked the balance of splitting the frame into thirds of sky, foreground & fence line. The sense of regularity (equal portions all round) & balance seemed to go with the geometry of the fence & gate.
And, unlike bloody power lines & contrails, here was something man-made I really didn't want to clone away. Makes a change.
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I have a rather romantic view of England, having been brought up in the "colonies' on large doses of "The Famous Five" and "The Secret Seven".
This image falls neatly into my imagination of the English countryside and that is why I immediately liked it.
Nothing in the composition worries me enough to make any negative comment.
William
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Moving on ... subject matter. It seems as if nobody photgraphs the gates & fences that dot the landscape, yet often there is some interesting detail in the weathering of the wood, or the juxtapositioning of hard, regularity in a countryside of largely soft, undulating forms. I just thought I'd give it a go, & photograph this form as well as the more usual landscape.
I like gates, though I do not collect them systematically.
(http://www.feldhaim.com/script/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/gallery/haseldorfer-binnenelbe/bw_doubleex_08.jpg&w=1000&.jpg)