Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Landscape & Nature Photography => Topic started by: fredweymouth on March 11, 2016, 07:18:59 am
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I found this barrel cactus flowering during last summer's monsoon season at a place called Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, which sits on the border with Mexico - southwest of Tucson, Arizona. The refuge itself largely consists of grasslands and rolling hills, border patrol :), and in the distance, the Baboquivari mountains.
At any rate, this is a 3 shot veritcal pano, stitched in LR using the new pano merge option.
Thought I would share something from my part of the world, comments and critiques welcome.
Fred
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I see this as a two-subject image. You got a nice cactus and a great set of clouds, but nothing connects them. They're sitting at opposite ends of the frame, separated by a stretch of grass. It may have been more interesting to take a shallow DOF shot of the cactus alone, giving it a bit more breathing room at the bottom. Just my ยข2.
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I think that Jens has a point. I spent a long time with this shot and always came to the "issue" mentioned above. The sky is gorgeous, the blooming cactus also is nice but there's this disconnect.
You should revisit the place a try again.
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Thanks for looking.
I had not considered that disconnect between the lower and top half. Here is another version from that day.
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I like the shot and do not see any "disconnect" as an issue. Do we really need yet another photo of a blooming plant or of dramatic clouds? Meh. Put the two together and you have a great juxtaposition of near and far, large and small, and a lovely sense of space and distance.
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The subjects have potential. The question I would be asking is why the narrow crop/aspect ratio - how does this help the image? I find it very distracting. The narrowness of it does contribute to a "potential disconnect". A little more room on either side would have been nice/helpful. Secondly the color is a little bit dead in the sky, the blue...and the grasses...both have a dull greenish cast...which takes some of the life away from image.
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The subjects have potential. The question I would be asking is why the narrow crop/aspect ratio - how does this help the image? I find it very distracting. The narrowness of it does contribute to a "potential disconnect". A little more room on either side would have been nice/helpful. Secondly the color is a little bit dead in the sky, the blue...and the grasses...both have a dull greenish cast...which takes some of the life away from image.
I think Brandt has a good point.
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Yes, a good idea would be to crop 1/4th sky, and to add just a bit of clarity and vibrance/saturation to the foreground.
Make some trials, I think you can obtain a good result.
Thierry
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The subjects have potential. The question I would be asking is why the narrow crop/aspect ratio - how does this help the image? I find it very distracting. The narrowness of it does contribute to a "potential disconnect". A little more room on either side would have been nice/helpful. Secondly the color is a little bit dead in the sky, the blue...and the grasses...both have a dull greenish cast...which takes some of the life away from image.
I think the narrow crop is important. The image shows what it needs to show and the photographer, to his credit, does not feel a need to adhere to more traditional aspect ratios. As for the greenish cast, I suspect that it might be a problem at your end. I have looked at this photo both on a business computer with cheap, non-calibrated monitors and also on my photography computer with calibrated, high-gamut monitors. No trace of a greenish cast.
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Thanks for the comments. As for the pano format, I just plain have a thing for it and take every chance I can to experiment with it. In this instance, I was trying to isolate the cactus, the grass and the sky in one slice. I actually shot this in a traditional format in a portrait orientation but prefer the vertical pano.
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I like it, it works well for me.